Bob Dylan
Time Out Of Mind
»
Bob Dylan
Time Out Of Mind
Columbia, 1997
RiYL: Tom Petty, Neil Young, Tom Waits |
Time Out Of Mind, the 1997 Grammy award-winning album for Best Contemporary Folk Album, Best Male Rock Vocals, and Album of the Year, succeeds with songs steeped in desolation, solitude and the blues.
The album is a culmination of Dylan's previous work. He is aware of his place in rock and roll history and what he is best at doing creatively at this point in his career.
Daniel Lanois, producer of U2's Joshua Tree, makes good on his second Dylan effort. The first, 1989's Oh Mercy, showed uneven promise. The sound was fuller and more focused than Dylan's '80s work, but the album was a collection of one-riff songs. Dylan meandered lyrically and the best cuts were not released.
Lanois gives Time Out Of Mind better treatment. There is no lead instrument on these tracks. The stripped sound forces Dylan's voice to carry songs, like it had on his other great albums. Instead of hiding behind guitarists like Mark Knopfler and Slash, bands such as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and the Grateful Dead and novelties such as backup singers, saxophonists, and sampled noises, Dylan is forced to lead the songs himself.
Dylan's raspy cigarette-ravaged voice works the blues songs with the world-weary wisdom of a man that has seen it all and spent as much time thinking about it all. "Can't Wait," "'Til I Fell In Love with You" and "Million Miles" are the 12-bar blues songs Dylan has had the ability to sing for years. They echo his unreleased classic from the 1983 Infidels sessions "Blind Willie McTell," about a man wondering how anyone could hope to see the sin and corruption in today's world and be as great as the legendary guitarist.
Between the 12-bar blues standards, Dylan also croons successfully on songs such as "Standing In The Doorway" and "Not Dark Yet." These songs resonate with the lyrical simplicity of 1974's tragic Blood On The Tracks.
The songs on Time Out Of Mind, written before Dylan's near-death encounter with histoplasmosis, give the listener goose bumps, as the artist reaches into the depths of human suffering and mortality and returns depressing insight.
In "Not Dark Yet," Dylan sings, "I'll live here and I'll die here against my will / I feel like I'm moving but I'm standing still / Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb / I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from." It is a simple thought stated simply. In a world where the hustle and bustle of technology and transportation sends us running in circles, these thoughts aren't offered often.
The 17-minute finale "Highlands" is an immediate classic. It hearkens back to Dylan's early work. The talking blues is featured on 1963's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and the use of epic length on 1966's Blonde on Blonde's 14-minute "Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands." The song is a typical story about being lost in today's world, old and lonely. His heart is in the highlands but he isn't there yet. As the now deceased Allen Ginsberg wrote in the liner notes of Dylan's 1975 Desire, "bard signs the awful movie where everybody loses & what can you say? My father age 80 also bowed his head & said, 'What can you do?' under his breath."
They were words for an album released twenty-two years before Time Out Of Mind, but they may be better suited for this album. Dylan is carefully singing about life and giving anyone that cares to listen a personal yet universal message.
JEFF ROSE |