Play Together Through LifeAs the decade closes, Bob Dylan's 67-year-old mug will grace yet another cover of Rolling Stone -- his eighth cover in 10 years -- a nearly obligatory commemoration of his 33rd studio record, Together Through Life. By all accounts, he's been worth it too; recent years have seen America's alpha songwriter enjoy one of the most fertile periods of his career and unanimous approval from a critical echo chamber that rings his name with a deafening din. This was punctuated by the Rolling Stone cover celebrating the last Dylan offering. The headline screamed: "The Genius of Bob Dylan."
Relatively, Together was anticipated and received rather quietly. Rolling Stone's David Fricke called it a "mixed bag" that lacked "the instant-classic aura" -- a far cry from when Modern Times had Robert Christgau stammering for comparisons from everyone from Matisse to Sonny Rollins. You can chalk up part of the limpid response to fatigue: the blue-faced stammer of critics over Uncle Bob has been on full tilt since 1997's Time Out of Mind. (Our jazz editor, Nick Dedina, loves to point out the shift in groupthink that saw unanimously high praise for last year's The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs -- a record culled mostly from B-sides of critical bombs from the '80s and '90s.) While Together Through Life may not be shortlisted among Dylan's sunset triumphs as a whole, its success lies in the fleeting details: brief sparks of brilliant singing and playing that are more commanding, more chilling, more gutsy, more everything than anything on his most cohesive albums of late. Even if it misses the roaring approval of the critical community, it undoubtedly continues Dylan's streak of late greatness and is certainly the liveliest offering of the bunch.
And so what if Together Through Life lacks the consistency that defines Dylan's pair of widely adored late records? So what if it has neither the haunted, windswept loneliness of 2001's Love and Theft nor the codgerly spirit of 2006's chart-topping Modern Times? Maybe that's due to the restlessness of the songwriter himself, a man who has spent an entire career minting and mastering musical styles just to retreat from them. Here, Dylan is more rootsy, moody and erratic than on Modern Times: skating past "boulevards of broken cars" with a second-line Chicano strut on "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" and offering a wispy, sentimental steel-guitar weep on "Life Is Hard" (which he wrote for Olivier Dahan's My Own Love Song). He coughs up a rowdy Texas roadhouse toss-off in "Jolene" and lands with an acoustic, south-of-the-border lilt on "This Dream of You." But even if the themes are erratic and the lyrics (many of them co-written with longtime Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter) often feel dashed off, Together has two singular ties that bind it together: the excellent playing of the best band he's fronted in years (maybe ever) and his voice.
The former is likely the greatest and most consistent thrill, mostly demonstrated in the accompaniment of Los Lobos' David Hidalgo, whose accordion serves as Dylan's sidekick and foil, twisting a playful response to the sentimental lyric of "I Feel a Change Comin' On" (perhaps the record's most instantly enjoyable tune) and buoying the gate to "If You Ever Go to Houston." In a recent interview, Dylan said that the record was a "kind of a road trip from Kansas City to New Orleans," but Hidalgo takes the whole thing on a southwestern detour. Dylan is also joined by another crony in Tom Petty guitarist Mike Campbell, who takes to the range of writing with unfailing taste.
Even so, Dylan's emotive rasp is the most musical of the record's instruments - chortling and teasing, leering and moaning. He's able to sneer grab-assin' come-ons in "Shake Shake Mama," offer some desultory self-pity in "This Dream of You," mourn and scold a "Forgetful Heart" and crack and croon through "Life Is Hard." The writing isn't as keen as what runs through much of the recent years, but in his cackling one-liners he's doing a whole lot more with less, and when he does spit out a come-on, it feels a slight more dangerous than the weary old fart who name-dropped Alicia Keys in Modern Times. When he gets colloquial with "Its All Good," his croaking voice is evidence enough that his apocalyptic vision is anything but all good.
So what if Together Through Life doesn't exactly come together as a whole? When everything does line up, like the nasty, ass-kicked blues of "My Wife's Hometown," it reminds us that Dylan can delight through his scrappy little wisecracks just as easily as his arching, album-long artistic dissertations. Regardless of what the headline on next week's Rolling Stone has to say, the genius of Dylan continues to be news.
- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC.
Well, I don't know why I spected more from BD on this album., it was just like a continuation of Modern Times, same music style, kind of blues,rock,e.castello in the slow songs.
His lyrics were not what i expect of him, the lyrics were borring...already written in other artist songs...I felt Together was outdated...maybe 10years ago music. There was nothing modern, nothing new from him. Simple lyrics, simple music, and his voice is getting worse and worse, maybe too much smoking cigarretes.
I was disapointed, I love Bob Dylan the greatest songwriter in the United States, however...I did not enjoy this music at all, the music too old, his lyrics too simple, his voice too smoky.
thanks.