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Genre:
Rock/Pop
Personnel: Bob Dylan (vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano); Denny
Freeman, Stu Kimball (guitar); Donnie Herron (steel guitar,
mandolin, violin, viola); Tony Garnier (cello, acoustic bass);
George G. Receli (drums, percussion).
Recording information: 2006. It's arguable that at no point since his 1960s heyday has Bob Dylan been as celebrated as in the decade following his critically acclaimed 1997 album TIME OUT OF MIND. Numerous films, books, and albums--mostly Columbia's impressive archive series of reissues--have been part of a universal canonization of the singer and met with considerable enthusiasm by fans and critics alike. 2006's MODERN TIMES, the third album to have been released in nearly 10 years and part of a trilogy that also includes 2001's brilliant and upbeat LOVE AND THEFT, is easily deserving of such enthusiasm and is further reason for the formal veneration. Musically, the album finds Dylan once again mining the stately traditionalist sound first heard on LOVE AND THEFT. Lazy blues numbers, piano-based songbook pop, and jumpin' country swing provide the backdrop for Dylan's continuing study of the vicissitudes of life, love, and death. Although he is somely world-Weary, a lot of life is lived in the verses of these songs and there is a dogged spirituality that provides, if not hope (a rather prosaic notion for Dylan by this point, to be sure), at least a means to finding contentment. Finally, a word about Dylan's voice here: while his singing has always been unconventional and never pretty in any traditional sense, in its raspy magnificence it is simply perfect for this timeless music.
© Muze/MTS Inc.
Rolling Stone (pp.99-100) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "The mood is America
on the brink -- of mechanization, of war, of domestic tranquility,
of fulfilling its promise and of selling its dreams one by one for
cash on the barrelhead....It is music of accumulated knowledge..."
Entertainment constantly (p.75) - "Intriguing, immediate, and quietly epic, MODERN TIMES must rank among Dylan's finest albums." Mojo (p.94) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] great deal of it is split betWeen 12-bar treatises about love and lust and croonsome ballads about much the same themes, and one regularly gets the sense that its author might just be having a whale of a time." Uncut (p.72) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he emotional breadth is helped by one of Dylan's strongest singing performances....A Dylan who finally seems comfortable, and is ready to take things as far as it'll go." No Depression (pp.97-98) - "[T]he album is both the most playfully sexual and profoundly spiritual from Dylan in decades."
Northern California Replay Records |
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