BuzzFlash Reviews
Modern Times (CD)
Bob Dylan
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
Although his voice has gotten even scruffier over the years, he has created material that is enhanced by the vocal limitations years of strain have placed on his vocal cords.
As one Internet reviewer noted about "Modern Times," "Make no mistake, this album is nothing short than amazing. It is a haunting and atmospheric blend of southern country and blues. It transports you to another place and time. Listening to this album makes you feel like you are in Mississippi in about 1945 in a motel lobby with ceiling fans and a great band performing. This will be one of Bob Dylans milestones. Well worth the wait. Bob Dylan is still the man!!"
Chris Jones, a music reviewer for the BBC, wrote glowingly of "Modern Times: "Modern Times is the exception that proves Bob's recent assertion that most modern music is poorly-recorded pap. It's a warm and utterly engaging album.
Filled with wittily self-depreciative asides ('my mind tied up in knots, I keep recycling the same old thoughts'), heartfelt love poems and (most surprising of all) harsh political critique (couched as ever in Biblical terminology) on the grand finale, ''Ain't Talkin' - Dylan's 44th album is more than we could have expected from this 65-year old enigma. The worrying musings on mortality have given way to a frankly peppy acceptance of his place in the world. He even name-checks Alicia Keys!
It's as though Dylan's worried, worked and rubbed away at these genres, smoothing his muse to the same archetypal condition of the originals he loves so much by Woody Guthrie, Big Joe Turner and Merle Haggard. He's sacrificed artifice (and fashionability) for the real deal. It really doesn't matter that his sound is almost inseparable from the original templates (''Rollin' And Tumblin''' doesn't even get a name change while ''Beyond The Horizon'' is basically ''Red Sails In the Sunset'' with new lyrics); Dylan's now lived and experienced enough of this stuff to really inhabit such genuine Americana. As he says on the opening track, ''Thunder On The Mountain'': 'Gonna sleep over there. That's where the music's coming from. I don't need any guide, I already know the way.' An album of the year, in any century..."
Another music reviewer, Tom Juric, praises "Modern Times": "In these ten songs, bawdy joy, restless heartache, a wild sense of humor, and bottomless sadness all coexist and inform one another as a warning and celebration of this precious human life while wondering openly about what comes after. This world view is expressed through musical and lyrical forms that are threatened with extinction: old rickety blues that still pack an electrically charged wallop, porch and parlor tunes, and pop ballads that could easily have come straight from the 1930s via the 1890s, but it also wails and roars the blues. Modern Times is the work of a professional mythmaker, a back-alley magician, and a prophetic creator of mischief. He knows his characters because he's been them all and can turn them all inside out in song: the road-worn holy man who's also a thief; the tender-hearted lover who loves to brawl; the poetic sage who's also a pickpocket; and the Everyman who embodies them all and just wants to get on with it. On Modern Times, all bets are off as to who finishes the race dead last, because that's the most interesting place to be: "Meet me at the bottom, don't lag behind/Bring me my boots and shoes/You can hang back or fight your best on the frontline/Sing a little bit of these workingman blues." There is nothing so intriguing as contradiction and Dylan offers it with knowing laughter and tears, because in his songs he displays that they are both sides of the same coin and he never waffles, because he's on the other side of the looking glass. Modern Times is the work of an untamed artist who, as he grows older, sees mortality as something to accept but not bow down to, the sound that refuses to surrender to corruption of the soul and spirit. It's more than a compelling listen; it's a convincing one."
In a time of Muzak pop music, Bob Dylan remains an original artist.
He reminds us what we have lost in the age of branded, watered down celebrity singers, who are marketed more for their entertainment value than their music.
Over the years, Dylan has remained an intriguing lyricist while his ability to create a seductive mood on each album has replaced his early years of protest music. Something lost, something gained. With Dylan, you always know that you are in the presence of a creative genius.
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