How Do You Rate a Dylan Release?
Comparing TIME OUT OF MIND to his early works to me is an apples to oranges equation. With a career now pushing towards the 50 year mark and a host of bonafide classic albums, how do you rate a CD by Bob Dylan? Do you rank it against its period or against the whole body of his work? It's difficult to just rate it as a single CD without taking in the context or his whole career or his "mystique". He was a different person in 1965 from what he was in 1997. The 97 version was coming off a period of low activity as well as a near fatal illness, where the early Dylan was basically taking on the world. The defiance that marked his early work had changed here into defiance against age and death. As such, this CD captures that feeling very successfully. He followed this with two other fine releases, LOVE AND THEFT and MODERN TIMES, but this is the superior of that trio to my ears.
Teaming again with producer Daniel Lanois who oversaw his comeback album OH MERCY, Dylan brings a strong set of dark songs that he matches to some very evocative backing music. I would say that this is his strongest set since BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, which he released over 20 years before. The opener LOVE SICK sets the tone for the rest of the CD. Over a choppy, slow crawl, Dylan ruminates on love in the twilight of life. The Cd is full of great songs that follow pretty much in this vein. My favorites are TRYIN' TO GET TO HEAVEN, NOT DARK YET, STANDING IN THE DOORWAY and the rockabilly flavored DIRT ROAD BLUES. It ends with a 17-minute free associative dirge HIGHLANDS that acts as a perfect coda.
Detractors might say that the album is one note, filled with depressing dirges, or might mention Dylan's admitingly blown out voice. I feel the album plays as a consistent whole, with the grim tone perfectly underlining the artist's message. Dylan's rough vocals also drive the point home. Of course, I am a fan of Tom Wait's vocals, so take that for what it's worth.
To me, TIME OUT OF MIND is a classic album, one of the jewels in Dylan's vast and esteemed catalog, and my admiration of it has grown in the over 10 years that I have owned and listened to it. Just don't ask me to choose if it's a better album than HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED or BLOOD ON THE TRACKS.
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mind numbingly sad
Music doesn't get sadder than this!
As you go through the album from start to finish, you will just become more and more depressed. An absolutly INCEDIBLE album from the master himself. I know that sounds like a bad thing but if your like me, and you find the sadder a song the more beautiful it is, then this album is for you; simple as that. Pure desperation, and confusion of a world that has left this old man behind. I keep coming back to this masterpiece.
Love Sick, Standing in the Doorway, Tryin' to Get to Heaven and Not Dark Yet are the real killers the last being my favourite off the album maybe my favourite Dylan song full stop?
In short, if you're a Dylan fan and you don't own this album BUY IT. . .
If your new to Dylan, and you're looking for a great place to start BUY IT. . . :) .
Dead on the inside
Desperation saturates and haunts it, and clogs its arteries and twists its nerves and blows smoke into its corridors, and fear burns its edges and memory tarnishes it. Time Out of Mind is an agitated album, a sweaty and broken and bruised mess of a record, a terrified mongrel hiding, battered in a filthy corner. It's a miserable album, a soul murdered. It may seem perverse, but that's actually praise. Think about it: sometimes, misery seems to be our only companion. Sometimes we feel alone and helpless and scared, miles from anything warm or redeeming. Sometimes, hope is a joke and love is a vicious lie. Sometimes, we're staring into the abyss and as it opens up at as, as it grows wider and deeper, grabs at us. It's good to have music that reflects that, right? I mean, isn't Exile On Main Street a masterpiece because it does pretty much the same thing?
Well, sort of. Time Out Of Mind does indeed get points for its pitch-perfect articulation of desperation and loss. It loses points for pretty much the same reason. It loses points because it doesn't offer an ounce of hope, because it takes the low road and simplifies all of the humanity of our darkest moments. It's an album that whispers into your ear, "yes, you're right to be sad. Things aren't going to get any better. " This hopelessness is the album's central conceit, and the result is a painfully one-dimensional listening experience. The greatest works of musical depression (the aforementioned Rolling Stones album, as well as such other classics as The Queen Is Dead and Dylan's own Blood On The Tracks) were masterpieces because they found a way to channel personal anguish into a sense of liberation- The Queen Is Dead did it by being poetic, Exile On Main Street did it by being ridiculously fun, and Blood On The Tracks did it by reveling in the overwhelming redemptive power of love, successful or otherwise. Time Out Of Mind just mopes. It's emotional sludge, a dull crawling slab of misery-for-misery's own sake. It doesn't offer hope or catharsis. It just asks you to wallow, to drift.
Three stars for effectively conveying that state of mind, for its bluesy textures and claustrophobic production, and for the tense, ominous "Highlands. " Chalk up the less-than-perfect rating to its exhausting miserabalism and relentless melodrama.
OF COURSE
What else is there to say! It's great. This CD won a Grammy for Album of the Year.
And Once Again, Dylan is Back
A friend in New Orleans FedExed it to us, the CD still hot off the presses. Vesta and I were living on a sailboat in the Caribbean when this record came out. I picked it up at Customs in Trinidad, took it to the boat. We were anchored off the Yacht Club, on the northwestern part of the island nation and in the Gulf of Paria.
Eager to hear the album, I hopped in the dinghy, motored out to the boat and put in on the player as we lifted anchor. We were headed out to Chacachacare, an island between Trinidad and Venezuela. It used to be a leper colony, is now abandoned and has a nice anchorage. It was dark that night and this is a dark record, perfect. We played it all night long, drinking Coke and rum. Once again, Dylan was back. And he was better than ever.
Every song on this record is a keeper. "Not Dark Yet" is one of the best songs Dylan has ever done and "Highlands" may well be the best, if not, it's right up there. What a song, what a record this is and aren't we all just "trying to get to heaven before they close the door. ".
You can see a complete list of all Bob Dylan discography, or go back to the Bob Dylan tabs
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