Having binged on much Bob Dylan throughout my university years, I’ve always explored each new release when they’ve come along, quickly buying into the hype of broadsheets that they’re each important, significant projects – despite ‘the voice’ and how much of them have of late, become covers and tributes to both mainstream and obscure artists of days long past.
That this new album is of all new material – putting aside the routine traits and/or accusations of the man’s borrowings of history – felt particularly paramount this time around and quickly had me morphing back into my 20s something student self, calling up the lyrics online to read through and dissect as I listen, assuming this to be another vital dispatch of rhyme and reason from some unearthly, unrivalled force.
Whether that’s what I’d find or not, I was willing and ready to buy into and crank up any hyperbole, perhaps in part because we’re of a time where the concept of culturally significant music events of scale in Britain, merely amounts to a Take That concert via video conference for customers of a price-comparison website and its cuddly toy incentives.
Would I have taken such a studious approach to indulging in the album were the world not burning in the flames of populism, oppression and inequality around me? Perhaps not, but the idea of tuning into a now 79 year old’s much experienced and informed perspectives seemed essential, at a time of increasingly regular horror at the discoveries of close friends and colleagues on Twitter, proclaiming that ‘black lives matter, yeah. But so do ALL lives.’ Almighty, trusted old Bard, give me something to believe in, trust and care for like you did all those years ago!
On album opener ‘I Contain Multitudes’, the real treat for me is in an artist turning a mirror on himself and describing what he sees, more so than the observations he makes. It immediately sets the mood for what’s to come, like a set of rules on a pub or bar’s door (I’m really missing nightlife during lockdown) as to what the deal is before you enter. Your one hour and ten minute stay will be a peaceful, reflective, moody and considered sitting, with lyrics and conversation across a brilliant, yet often decisively understated backdrop of music.
As quickly as you’ve just been spooned statements laying out who the album’s narrator is and what he’s made of, you’re quickly told on ‘False Prophet’ to hold your horses because what you think he is, ain’t it. As I quickly daydreamed into my once or twice per decade wonder as to who the man really is and why it does or doesn’t matter, I was snapped out of it by ‘My Own Version Of You’, a tip toeing walk through an imaginative tale where for the first time in the album’s three openers, the focus is largely on the external.
Following the proclamations, contradictions and intents before it, ‘I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You’ stands as a straightforward yet beautiful and moving piece that even the stoniest of hearts would be pleased to be feeling and saying of a romance in their later years. Dylanphiles may come to spend miles of Reddit threads discussing how this is actually talking of the man’s career and work in music rather than love. Whatever the answer, which we’ll never know, it works charmingly.
After the slow, reflective and intriguing ‘Black Rider’, the foot-tapping ‘Goodbye Jimmy Reed’ introduces a welcome increase in tempo as its respectful nod to the American blues musician and songwriter reinforces the sense that the overall album’s both teaching you something and taking you on a trip. The hymn-like ‘Mother of Muses’ takes the pace down once more, packing in references from Elvis, all the way back to Greek mythology along its way. If Dylan were to ever ‘do a Zoom’, his bookshelf background would surely win top prize.
Historical references continue on ‘Crossing The Rubicon’ whilst, bundled up in what on the surface might seem to be a commercial for an island in the Straits of Florida, talk of death, immortality and shadows after dark make up ‘Key West’. This feels closely aligned to the ideas and reflections of ‘Not Dark Yet’ from the 1997 album ‘Time Out Of Mind’. That album was hailed by fans and critics alike as both an artistic comeback and a contemplative career finale – which eight defiant studio albums later you’d be forgiven for labelling this one too, knowing full well you’ll quite possibly be proven wrong.
The album closes on ‘Murder Most Foul’ which at just short of seventeen minutes, comes packed with as many reflections, statements and historical references as the rest of the album put together. Here and throughout all the songs before it, Dylan is deeply in his own unique lane, sometimes talking deeply from the heart, other times giving history lessons and always holding the audience in a state of deep, inquisitive listening.
As the power and presence of strategically shallow political slogans and rhetoric pulls people of all tribes further into their reductive echo chambers and as life passes fleetingly by despite being under a pandemic’s pause, this album is a much welcomed opportunity and exercise in immersing one’s self in the search and exploration of meaning, whether that’s of the author’s intent or the listener’s individual response.
