BOB DYLAN: TIME OUT OF MIND (1997)
1) Love Sick; 2) Dirt Road
Blues; 3) Standing In The Doorway; 4) Million Miles; 5) Trying To Get To
Heaven; 6) 'Til I Fell In Love With You; 7) Not Dark Yet; 8) Cold Irons Bound;
9) Make You Feel My Love; 10) Can't Wait; 11) Highlands.
The first thing you will probably notice about
the album is that its last track goes on for 16 and a half minutes — longer
than ʽSad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlandsʼ! — and, more than that, it is also called
ʽHighlandsʼ, which is no more reminiscent of Robert Burns than echoing the
aforementioned title. Then there is another thing worth noting — that the
running length of the album is 72 minutes, which may, of course, simply be a usual
tribute to the growing capacities of the CD era, but, for that matter, this was
also the exact running length of Blonde
On Blonde. Coincidence? Most likely so, but who's to tell there wasn't
something going on a subconscious level?
It is irrelevant whether critical opinion
«overrated» or «underrated» Time Out Of
Mind when it came out, hailing the record as that particular miraculous
offering from the old man that everybody was secretly hoping for, but nobody
dared to predict in the open. What matters is that most people felt a strong tug, felt that the record was speaking
to them in deep, mysterious ways that had, for a long time, seemed completely
blocked off and forgotten. In a way, it is
the Dylan of Blonde On Blonde
speaking here. The real Dylan, some
might say — the one who got frozen in time after the motorcycle accident and
was replaced by the Dylan of The
Basement Tapes and the Dylan of Blood
On The Tracks, a first-class replacement but not exactly the same thing.
Now, thirty years later, the Dylan of 1966 has been let out of the fridge — and
no, the refrigeration process did not stop him from growing older, but it did
freeze the evolution of talent and the personal history. No Rolling Thunder, no
born-again Christianism, no Eighties' crisis.
What we have is a man who fell asleep thirty
years ago, and is now waking up — in a cold, distant world that still feels
like a dream (courtesy of Daniel Lanois' production devices). That is ʽLove
Sickʼ, which, if anything, creates the atmosphere of a barren, collapsed
environment, devoid of sentient life-forms: "I'm walking through the
streets that are dead", backed with a drip-drip-dripping organ pattern
(either Bob's own beating heart or the ominous tick of the last clock left
alive on the planet) against which distant keyboards and slide guitars play a
small army of haunting ghosts. Formally, the song is about a lost or
unreachable love, but you'd never guess it without the lyrics — my first
reaction would be «last survivor of a nuclear holocaust».
Although ʽLove Sickʼ does set the tone, and is
probably the one song most responsible for the album's reputation as «Dylan's
depressive masterpiece», Time Out Of
Mind in general is not really about depression. There are some formally
optimistic numbers here as well (particularly romantic ballads like ʽMake You
Feel My Loveʼ), and the famous refrain of one of the album's key songs
("it's not dark yet, but it's getting there"), when you stop to think
about it, is not really delivered with the kind of ominous gloom you'd expect
to accompany such a phrase, but rather with an attitude of «wise amusement».
The Dylan of Blonde On Blonde,
frozen in time and now resuscitated to right all the wrongs, refuses to get too
angry, too sad, or too smitten by any sort of emotions. He has learned to be
able to acknowledge all the problems without getting too fussy, too whiny, or too
opinionated about it.
Which is, ultimately, the reason for all the
hoopla — with Time Out Of Mind
crackling out of your speakers, you might feel, first time in years, that once
again, Dylan has an edge over you. For a long time, his albums posed no
questions, or if they did, the first one was «why exactly did I just waste time
on this when I could rather have given another spin to Highway 61?» But now, all of a sudden, there is this blast of deep alien
wisdom, unfathomable and perplexing. A put-on, perhaps? A front? These are
questions that one can only answer for oneself. My answer is simple — the
purpose of Dylan's entire life was to blur the difference between back and
front, between put-ons and sincere confessions. But the vibe I get from this
album is just exactly the kind of vibe I would
expect from a smart, seen-it-all 57-year old dude with artistic talent and a
keen sense of taste. Except that its particular effect is impossible to
describe in words.
Of course, Lanois has to take a lot of credit for the album; he is the
reason why all of the follow-ups never quite received the same amount of
acclaim. Although his production stamp is easily recognizable on any album, he
knows how to be versatile, and makes lots of small, but important shifts from
the approach used on Oh Mercy in
order to accommodate Bob's current needs and, most particularly, Bob's vocal
shift — over the eight years that separate their two collaborations, that voice
has lost the last traces of color, and is now reduced to a hoarse, sandpapered
state that needs special treatment. Lanois provides that treatment with gusto,
matching most of the instruments to the voice — yes, they too, particularly
the harmonicas and the organs, sound like they've been sandpapered a-plenty.
Most importantly, though, is the ghostly aspect of the album. It does not
really have any particularly memorable multi-note riffs or complex lead lines;
it's more as if it was all constructed from a perfectly engineered set of
musical moans, wails, creaks, squeaks, squawks, blimps, and blurts. Listen to
ʽCan't Waitʼ, for instance, which basically sounds like a series of squeaky
doors opening and closing, as if their hinges got plenty of time to rust up
while Bob was still waiting. Or ʽMillion Milesʼ, where Jim Dickinson's pump
organ is walking a shaky, repetitive, never-ending walk against the other
instruments, echoing Bob's refrain of "I try to get closer, but I'm still
a million miles from you" — sure you are, if the world is running away
from under your feet in the guise of half a dozen minimalist guitar and
keyboard parts, scattered around the speakers.
Many, if not most, of the songs «scrap
themselves together» — beginning as a disjointed series of sonic happenings,
eventually falling together in a surprisingly tightly coordinated groove. The
groove is sometimes completely democratic, but the best songs are probably the
ones where there is a dominating force — such as the deep, hopping bassline of
ʽCold Irons Boundʼ, appearing on the horizon at 0:14 into the song and
completely determining its grim, gruff face. Dylan won the Grammy for Best
Vocal Performance here, but, frankly speaking, his vocals are on the level
through the entire album — the award should have gone to Lanois for Best Cold Storm
Front Arrangement, with the bass, snappy guitars, and snowy organ tugging away
at the listener like a bunch of really
pissed-off North winds.
The Blonde
On Blonde connection, upon which I sort of hung up this review, does not
entirely rest on imaginary symmetries — for instance, if you listen to
ʽStanding In The Doorwayʼ closely enough, you are bound to hear echoes of ʽJust
Like A Womanʼ in the guitar lines; and the organ parts on ʽTrying To Get To
Heavenʼ (among others) are almost certainly played with Al Kooper's work on
ʽOne Of Us Must Knowʼ (among others) well fixed in the mind of the current
organ player. This, too, is taken care of by Lanois, who does his best to
reward us with nostalgic memories of the «thin wild mercury sound» from time
to time — not always, so as not to turn the whole deal into unabashed
nostalgia, but frequently enough to keep our minds well set on the past.
ʽHighlandsʼ, of course, is really no
ʽLowlandsʼ, nor does it even try to, apart from the superficial analogies. It's
really more of a somber Dire Straits-style bluesy number (you could very easily
visualize it as sung and played by Knopfler), and when taken on its own, it has
no reason whatsoever to drag on for sixteen minutes. In fact, you won't really
lose track of the integrity of Time Out
Of Mind if you turn it off at any
time — be it three, six, or ten minutes into the song; lyrics excluded, that
is, since the whole piece is supposed to be Bob's artistic testament — "my
heart's in the highlands" may echo Scottish sentiments, but the
«highlands» that Bob is really talking about actually happen to be much higher
than the peak of Ben Nevis. So it's a very important song, even if you are not
swayed over with its monotonous, almost robotic groove — but at this point, Bob
has no interest in swaying, converting, or mesmerizing you. He is being
completely adequate to himself, and even the odd story about his encounter with
a restaurant waitress that he throws in the middle comes across as perfectly
natural, nothing to be amazed or irritated at. The man is really quite at peace
with himself, despite all the seeming tension and worry.
Without going into boring discussions on
whether the album really stands up to Bob's highest standards, is as good as or
better than his «classic» stuff, etc., etc., let's just say that this is the perfect album for a 57-year old
veteran with a lengthy career behind his back. When Dylan just started out, in
the early 1960s, he was already fascinated by those strange blues tunes about
death, redemption, and the Heavenly way — which he understood and interpreted
from his perspective of a smart, reclusive, rebellious youngster. Thirty-five
years later, that reclusiveness and rebelliousness have been burned down,
charred and transformed into clouds of black smoke, but the smoke is completely
organic and natural.
Dylan himself has denied that the album was, in
any way, connected to his near-death experience later that year, as he was
struggling with histoplasmosis (the album's release was delayed until
September, by which time Bob had recuperated) — which makes this an eerie
coincidence, since Time Out Of Mind really
does sound a lot like a typical album
for somebody whose intention it is to make final peace with the world, and
prepare himself for a better place somewhere out there. Regardless of the
circumstances, though, it does belong in the small collection of all terminally
ill people — what with that soothing mix of doom, gloom, tranquility, and self-assuredness.
No matter how many spooky ghosts Mr. Lanois has amassed for the occasion,
Dylan's weather-proof singing brushes them all aside — he ain't afraid of no
squeaky doors opening up into the void, and sets a terrific example for us all
here, especially as we hit our later years (I'm just hoping that, thirty years
from now, Adele will cover ʽLove Sickʼ or ʽTrying To Get To Heavenʼ with the
same emotional precision she demonstrated when covering ʽMake You Feel My
Loveʼ, the only song on here equally suitable for young and old mindset alike).
And — thumbs up,
of course.
Check "Time Out Of Mind" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Time Out Of Mind" (MP3) on Amazon
Another great revisiting, George. I'm counting down till you reach Modern Times and the other releases since the end of the old site. Any plans to revisit/update the Bootleg Series as well? Maybe the new Side Tracks compilation?
ReplyDeleteA beautiful and intriguing record. Not dark yet has become one of my favorite Dylan tunes
ReplyDeleteGeorge, you're the one reviewer who can make me want to track down as soon as possible an album I've never heard -- I'm off to find "Time Out Of Mind." And thanks for providing all these reviews for free. They're worth more than many written by paid critics, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Nancy. Appreciate the support!
DeleteI second what Nancy said. I may not always agree with you, George, but you always have something insightful and interesting to say about an album, a talent the vast majority of music critics severely lack. I appreciate the thought and effort you put into these reviews, and they've introduced me to several albums I would not have otherwise listened to. Thanks!
DeleteYou're a brilliant reviewer, mr Starostin! Been following you since the early days (in my case about 2001). And you always inspire, and expand my horizon. And I here may be wrong, no propblem, but I think Highlands is a b...dy masterpiece. The very fact that it drags on for so long, is the whole point of the song methinks; the monotony of it is exactly whhat makes the song happen. It's a song about life's dreary repetition. The audacity of writing a song that mimic that dreariness - yes, a boring song - is also what makes the ending happen - "with the twang of the arrow....". But maybe one has to have a touch of depression and world-weariness to lock into that particular mode. Comes easy to me sometimes! ;D
ReplyDelete