I’m a late-comer in terms of appreciating Bob Dylan. I first listened to him in the early 80’s and rejected him outright; my scarcely teenage brain couldn’t grasp what the hell he was going on about. To me Dylan was just a whiney hippie from the sixties who couldn’t sing and needed more distortion on his guitar. I was more into the frenetic and melodic pop-punk of The Undertones and The Police, with a bit of headbanging to AC/DC on the side. Yeah, I know Bon Scott was whiney too, but he had balls. Big ones.
I discovered an appreciation for Dylan as recently as a couple of years ago. I hadn’t listened to him in the intervening twenty years, and only tried again when my new girlfriend’s CD collection had quite a bit of Bob in it. His early stuff blew me away. Seriously. Amazing poetry and bravado, and his humour really shone through. I was moved! Then when I watched “No Direction Home” (by Scorcese) last year it was the first time I’d seen those early clips. What a beautifully ugly smart-arsed confident prick of a musical genius he was then.
Now, to these “Modern Times”. Not much fire on here; this album will warm you without any fear of being burnt. It’s laid back, with soft melodies smeared over a chugging fifties-era rhythm section and a few Chuck Berry-esque solos. You still get Bob’s distinctive twang, but now he sounds like the hairy love-child of Willie Nelson and Zucchero, playing with vocal treacle. The only tracks I really loved in the first three listens of this album were “The Levee’s Gonna Break” and “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”, the bluesiest songs on the album. If you like your rock ‘n’ roll a little bit country, you’ll love this album. If, like me, you like your old-timey rock ‘n’ roll a little more… raw?… then you’ll probably listen to this album once and then put it away until some quiet late night after quite a few beers when you want to drift off to sleep to the sound of Bob’s voice.
Of course, that said, I’ll probably love this album in about twenty years or so…
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Comment by joiezabel — October 16, 2006 @ 1:33 pm
i totally agree with you on this one - it’s good but there’s nothing special about it. and he DOES sound like the hairy love-child of Willie Nelson and Zucchero, come to think of it…