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.”

By the mid-’70s, even Dylan’s most ardent supporters began taking his artistic decline for granted. Albums like NEW MORNING and PLANET WAVES were fine works, but lacked the visionary spark of his seminal ’60s recordings. At 34 he was already being written off as a has-been. That presumption is what made BLOOD ON THE TRACKS such a glorious sucker-punch of a record.

One of Dylan’s most mournful efforts, this album, which easily ranks among his best, is full of stories about lost love and the struggle for peace of mind. With a simple, country-flavored backing somewhat akin to NASHVILLE SKYLINE, he recounts shattered love affairs in heart-breaking detail on songs like “Simple Twist Of Fate” and “If You See Her Say Hello.” On the vengeful “Idiot Wind” he rails mercilessly against the ignorant and self-obsessed a la “Like A Rolling Stone.” The difference here, and the major breakthrough for Dylan, is that by the end of the song, he’s lumping himself in with those he excoriates so vehemently.

Tracklisting
1. Tangled Up in Blue
2. Simple Twist of Fate
3. Youre a Big Girl Now
4. Idiot Wind
5. Youre Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
6. Meet Me in the Morning
7. Lily Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts
8. If You See Her
9. Say Hello
10. Shelter from the Storm
11. Buckets of Rain

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.96) – Ranked #16 in Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums Of All Time” – “…No one disputes the album’s luxuriant tangle of guitars, the gritty directness in Dylan’s voice and the magnificent confessional force of his writing…”

Q (1/03, p.69) – Included in Q Magazine’s “100 Greatest Albums Ever”

Q (12/93, p.131) – 5 Stars (out of 5) – “…Suddenly Dylan no longer seemed to be straining to recapture the surreal poetic torrents of the ’60s….this is probably Dylan’s most complete and most unified album–and yes, damnit, his best…”

Alternative Press (5/01, p.104) – Included in AP’s “10 Essential Breakup Albums” – “…Dylan has never been so thematically clear….representing a man full of regret and misery, singing through his tears.”

Vibe (12/99, p.157) – Included in Vibe’s 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century

Q (Magazine) (p.110) – “Against the backdrop of his own collapsing marriage, it’s as close as he ever got to the confessional school of singer-songwriters…”

NME (Magazine) (10/2/93, p.29) – Ranked #85 in NME’s list of the “Greatest Albums Of All Time.”

NME (Magazine) (9/18/93, p.19) – Ranked #29 in NME’s list of the “Greatest Albums Of The ’70s.”

NME (Magazine) (8/12/00, p.28) – Ranked #13 in The NME “Top 30 Heartbreak Albums” – “…A bitter, sorrowful eulogy to love and the pain of breaking up.”

Though 1966’s BLONDE ON BLONDE is usually singled out as the most innovative Bob Dylan album, its predecessor HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED is the one that definitively marks Dylan’s transformation from progressive folk singer to visionary rock poet. It’s Dylan’s first fully electric album, powered by the manic intensity of Mike Bloomfield’s skull-and-crossbones blues-rock guitar leads and Al Kooper’s rich organ fills.

While many of the songs are presented in a traditional 12-bar blues format, the lyrics find Dylan finally abandoning conventional linear narrative in favor of poetic abstraction, surreal imagery, and biting sarcasm. In the rock world, there has never been a lambasting harsher or more cathartic than the excoriation of “Ballad of a Thin Man,” and no challenge more bold than that offered in the iconic “Like a Rolling Stone.” When Dylan invokes the names of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot towards the end of the poetic epic “Desolation Row,” he’s not just name-dropping; he’s merely delineating the company in which a work as rich and ground-breaking as HIGHWAY 61 belongs.

Tracklisting
1. Like A Rolling Stone
2. Tombstone Blues
3. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Lot To Cry
4. From A Buick 6
5. Ballad Of A Thin Man
6. Queen Jane Approximately
7. Highway 61 Revisited
8. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
9. Desolation Row

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.88) – Ranked #4 in Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums Of All Time” – “…One of those albums that, quite simply, changed everything…”

Q (7/01, p.45) – “…Dylan is in stinging form…”

Q (Magazine) (p.110) – “[A] dizzying rush of moody disquiet, surreal imagery and freakshow characters culminate in the mighty ‘Desolation Row.’”

NME (Magazine) (10/2/93, p.29) – Ranked #14 in NME’s list of the “Greatest Albums Of All Time.”

Related Posts
Bob Dylan – Desire

DESIRE was the studio realization of the Rolling Thunder revue’s sound. The musicians involved in this mid-’70s Dylan project were more than a backup band; they forged a distinctive musical vision, loose and swirling, the perfect aural equivalent of the traveling gypsy/carnival image they affected onstage. Drummer Howie Wyeth, who possessed an uncannily sympathetic ear for accompanying singer-songwriters, and violinist Scarlet Rivera, built their careers on the foundation of the Rolling Thunder band.

Many critics balked at Dylan’s lyrical collaborations with Jacques Levy on this album, but their reservations were just glorified xenophobia. Levy’s flowing, colloquial style suited Dylan’s music and delivery perfectly, and the two produced several gems. “Isis” is an exotic tale of intrigue that turns out to be a unique love story. “Hurricane” breathlessly tells the true story of Ruben Carter, a boxer framed for murder and acquitted years after DESIRE’s release. It still stands as one of Dylan’s most exciting, emotional tunes.

Tracklisting
1. Hurricane
2. Isis
3. Mozambique
4. One More Cup Of Coffee
5. Oh, Sister
6. Joey
7. Romance In Durango
8. Black Diamond Bay
9. Sara

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.136) – Ranked #174 in Rolling Stone’s “The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time”

Q (Magazine) (p.111) – “[I]t’s probably best known for ‘Hurricane,’ a rousing account of boxer Rubin Carter’s wrongful conviction for murder.”