With this album Dylan emerged from the cloak of Woody Guthrie and proclaimed his own unique talent. No longer detached–the set was originally entitled BOB DYLAN’S BLUES–he personalized his songs, famously rejecting four from the final draft in favor of others reflecting his newer muse. Protest songs were given a wider resonance–the text of “Masters Of War” remains sadly relevant decades later–while his love songs are haunting but universal statements. Dylan injected black humor into the talking blues and railed against injustice in all forms, with a perception encompassing the anger of a generation. FREEWHEELIN’ is a landmark in the development of folk and pop music.

On this album it was clear that Dylan was becoming bored with straight folk, although his music was still acoustic. His left-thinking devotees began to raise an eyebrow at subtle lyrical shifts, yet this album was to be raided time and again–particularly by the Byrds–in 1965’s folk rock boom. There is much free-spirited music, as if Dylan was somehow aware of the acceptance that was around the corner, and it has been noted that here were the first signs of his trademark vocal style so prevalent through the rest of the ’60s. Take your pick: most of the offerings are striking. “My Back Pages,” “All I Really Want To Do,” “It Ain’t Me Babe,” and even a last nod to protest, “The Chimes Of Freedom.” How can one man have been so prolific?

NASHVILLE from the album’s title. However, as usual, he proved ahead of the game; his embrace of country ushered in Gram Parsons, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and scores of subsequent artists under the Americana banner. Prescient too was his nod to Johnny Cash, with whom he duets on the gorgeous “Girl From The North Country.” Buoyed by an altered, near-crooning vocal style, most of the tracks are pleasant and enduring; the chart hit “Lay Lady Lay” remains one of Dylan’s most engaging songs.

TIME OUT OF MIND won the 1998 Grammy Awards for Album Of The Year and for Best Contemporary Folk Album. “Cold Irons Bound” won the 1998 Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.
This album by the quintessential singer-songwriter comes after a long layoff from recording original material. Dylan’s previous two albums were powerful collections of traditional songs, and the album that preceded them was full of some rather iffy original tunes, so all eyes were on Dylan to make one of his patented surprise comebacks. As luck would have it, that’s exactly what TIME OUT OF MIND turns out to be. Produced by Daniel Lanois, who manned the boards for Dylan’s best latter-day album, OH MERCY, this one has the kind of raw, spontaneous vibe that serves Zimmy’s music so well.
Loss and world-weariness abound in the lyrics, and Dylan articulates these emotions perfectly, in a manner that seems simultaneously casual and precise. Songs like “Standing In The Doorway” and “Million Miles” are bathed in sorrow and emotional desolation, but are so well-crafted that their solipsism is irresistible. An all-star cast including Ry Cooder and Duke Robillard provides the sparse, rough-edged, bluesy accompaniment that casts Dylan’s compositions in the perfect musical light. Bob’s back!

After using SLOW TRAIN COMING, SAVED and SHOT OF LOVE as sounding boards for his born-again Christianity, Bob Dylan took a trip to Israel amidst rumors that he was repudiating his new faith and embracing his Judaic roots. Upon returning from his overseas excursion, Dylan went straight into the studio with co-producer Mark Knopfler and emerged with INFIDELS, a record that found the legendary singer-songwriter recording songs that were more of a political nature than a religious one.
Backed by a band that includes Knopfler and ex-Stone Mick Taylor on guitar and the legendary reggae rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, Zimmy’s biting songs don’t lack for solid musical support. Speaking out with conviction, Dylan uses the hard-driving “Neighborhood Bully” to praise Israel’s fortitude amidst a sea of hostile Arab relations, while the feisty troubador rips into corporate greed within the barrage of twangy country guitar that defines “Union Sundown.” “Jokerman,” one of Dylan’s most enduring songs, offers a flirtation with reggae, with Dylan blowing away on harmonica as Knopfler provides the perfect accompaniment with his distinctive guitar work.

Oh Mercy was hailed as a comeback, not just because it had songs noticeably more meaningful than anything Bob Dylan had recently released, but because Daniel Lanois’ production gave it cohesion. There was cohesion on Empire Burlesque, of course, but that cohesion was a little too slick, a little too commercial, whereas this record was filled with atmospheric, hazy production — a sound as arty as most assumed the songs to be. And Dylan followed suit, giving Lanois significant songs — palpably social works, love songs, and poems — that seemed to connect with his past. And, at the time, this production made it seem like the equivalent of his ’60s records, meaning that its artiness was cutting edge, not portentous. Over the years, Oh Mercy hasn’t aged particularly well, seeming as self-conscious as such other gauzy Lanois productions as So and The Joshua Tree, even though it makes more sense than the ersatz pizzazz of Burlesque. Still, the songs make Oh Mercy noteworthy; they find Dylan quietly raging against the materialism of President Reagan and accepting maturity, albeit with a slight reluctance. So, Oh Mercy is finally more interesting for what it tries to achieve than for what it actually does achieve. At its best, this is a collection of small, shining moments, with the best songs shining brighter than their production or the album’s overall effect.

When Bob Dylan dropped Time Out of Mind in 1997, it was a rollicking rockabilly and blues record, full of sad songs about mortality, disappointment, and dissolution. 2001 brought Love and Theft, which was also steeped in stomping blues and other folk forms. It was funny, celebratory in places and biting in others. Dylan has been busy since then: he did a Victoria’s Secret commercial, toured almost nonstop, was in a couple films — Larry Charles’ Masked and Anonymous and Martin Scorsese’s documentary No Direction Home — and published the first of a purported three volumes of his cagey, rambling autobiography, {-Chronicles. Lately, he’s been thinking about Alicia Keys. This last comment comes from the man himself in “Thunder on the Mountain,” the opening track on Modern Times, a barn-burning, raucous, and unruly blues tune that finds the old man sounding mighty feisty and gleefully agitated: “I was thinkin’ ’bout Alicia Keys/Couldn’t keep from cryin’/She was born in Hell’s Kitchen and I was livin’ down the line/I’ve been lookin’ for her even clear through Tennessee.” The drums shuffle with brushes, the piano is pumping like Jerry Lee Lewis, the bass is popping, and a slide guitar that feels like it’s calling the late Michael Bloomfield back from 1966 — à la Highway 61 Revisited — slips in and out of the ether like a ghost wanting to emerge in the flesh. Dylan’s own choppy leads snarl in the break and he’s letting his blues fall down like rain: “Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches/I’ll recruit my army from the orphanages/ I’ve been to St. Herman’s church and said my religious vows/I sucked the milk out of a thousand cows/I got the pork chop, she got the pie/She ain’t no angel and neither am I…I did all I could/I did it right there and then/I’ve already confessed I don’t need to confess again.” Thus begins the third part of Dylan’s renaissance trilogy (thus far, y’all). Modern Times is raw; it feels live, immediate, and in places even shambolic. Rhythms slip, time stretches and turns back on itself, and lyrics are rushed to fit into verses that just won’t stop coming. Dylan produced the set himself under his Jack Frost moniker. Its songs are humorous and cryptic, tender and snarling. What’s he saying? We don’t need to concern ourselves with that any more than we had to Willie Dixon talking about backdoor men or Elmore James dusting his broom. Dylan’s blues are primitive and impure. Though performed by a crackerjack band, they’re played with fury; the singer wrestles down musical history as he spits in the eye of the modern world. But blues isn’t the only music here. There are parlor songs such as “Spirit on the Water,” where love is as heavenly and earthly a thing as exists in this life. The band swings gently and carefree, with Denny Freeman and Stu Kimball playing slippery — and sometimes sloppy — jazz chords as Tony Garnier’s bass and George Receli’s sputtering snare walk the beat. Another, “When the Deal Goes Down,” tempts the listener into thinking that Dylan is aping Bing Crosby in his gravelly, snake-rattle voice. True, he’s an unabashed fan of the old arch mean-hearted crooner. But it just ain’t Bing, because it’s got that true old-time swing.

Bob Dylan’s career has always been about defying expectations. Accordingly he followed 1997’s much-heralded TIME OUT OF MIND with a marked about-face. Where its predecessor was a bleak emotional landscape full of languid atmospheres, existential sentiments, and graveyard vocal delivery, LOVE AND THEFT finds Dylan much more energized and hopeful. Instead of swamp-like textures, we get sharp, cracking bar-band blues, and lissome ballads with a ’20s/’30s feel. The old codger has never sounded more spry; after observing that “summer days and summer nights are gone,” he follows up with “I know a place where there’s still something going on.” Elsewhere he’s variously hunting bear, standing on a table to make a toast, burning down a house, and starting a new empire.
The musical context for all this uproar is informed more heavily by Dylan’s earliest Americana roots than anything other than his albums of traditional folk songs. Delta and Chicago blues are templates for many songs, while a few others even more anachronistically suggest a future for Dylan as ghost writer for Leon Redbone. The lyrics themselves are littered with quotes from/references to old blues tunes, but Dylan’s classic non-linear structure and wild imagination allow him to transcend his influences even as he assimilates them.

After two decades of outsourcing the producing and arranging of his records to everyone from Mark Knopfler to Daniel Lanois, Bob Dylan stopped phoning it in in the ’00s and began directly shaping their sound and feel. As producer of TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE, he elevates the near-cliche material with a beautifully crafted latticework of breathy border-town accordion and smoky guitar riffs (courtesy of Los Lobos’s David Hidalgo and Heartbreaker Mike Campbell respectively), steel guitar, mandolin, and brushed drums. Initially intended as a soundtrack of an Olivier Drahan movie, the album finds a pleasantly off-hand bard building on the wistful romanticism of recent ballads (like MODERN TIMES’s “Beyond the Horizon”) with a cycle of songs (nine of them co-written with legendary Dead lyricist Robert Hunter) about dreaming, hoping, and good love. Indeed, the change in “I Feel A Change Comin’ On” is not of the apocalyptic hard rain variety, but portends a potential tryst as Dylan chimes “life is for love” with uncharacteristic sweetness. Via languid slow burns (”Forgetful Heart”), sensual grooves (”If You Ever Go To Houston”), and loping blues walkarounds (”Jolene”), TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE plays like a great date night in a Texas dancehall–perfect for lovers tired of talking, who just want to grab hold and sway.

Half greatest-hits album, half career summary, the full three-disc version of 2007’s 45th-anniversary collection, DYLAN (also available as a single-disc distillation), is a public service to both Bob Dylan neophytes and fans who wrote off his late-’70s-to-mid-’80s fallow period. For the latter group, the best songs from Dylan’s “lost years” are cherry-picked, proving that even amid periods of inconsistency, Hibbing, Minnesota’s favorite son never lost his spark of genius.These 51 songs–arranged in chronological order–track Dylan’s development from Greenwich Village folk hero to surrealist rocker to grizzled bluesman. All the key tracks from his glory days are here, from “Blowin’ in the Wind” to “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” but perhaps more illuminating is the esoterica; anyone not paying close attention to Dylan’s career left-turns could easily have missed such almost-lost gems as “Dark Eyes” (from the largely unremarkable EMPIRE BURLESQUE) or “Blood in My Eyes” from trad folk/blues album WORLD GONE WRONG. When the dust of history settles, the lesser-known tunes collected on DYLAN will be just as important as the “hits.”