Modern Times
For most of his life, Bob Dylan has tried to claim for himself the worn-down wisdom and authenticity of his musical heroes, and at age 65, he may finally believe that he\'s earned the right to join them. Recording with his road band on the self-produced *Modern Times*, he\'s again grappling with matters of faith, love, mortality, and the relentless passage of time, scattering hard-won morsels of insight, brazenly, gleefully poaching from the blues canon and sprinkling in his own peculiar perceptions. A mix of blues, rave-ups, introspective folk, and Tin Pan Alley pop, much of the album finds Dylan in the role of conflicted preacher, warning his minions of the cruel fate that awaits them without offering a pathway to salvation. \"The world has gone black before my eyes,\" he sings on the delicate, poignant \"Nettie Moore,\" before adding, \"I\'m beginning to believe what the scriptures tell.\" On the mournful \"Ain\'t Talkin\',\" he explains: \"I practice a faith that\'s long abandoned, ain\'t no altars on this long and lonesome road.\" It\'s a strange, hopeless sort of spirituality. Dreamy, Hoagy Carmichael-style shuffles like \"Beyond the Horizon\" and \"When the Deal Goes Down\" provide a welcome counterweight to the more prickly concerns. *Modern Times* is a gripping hour inside the psyche of a wise man who, despite a lifetime of searching, finds no sufficient answers to life\'s biggest questions — a man with no direction home.
The music legend returns with a companion piece to 2001's Love and Theft, offering new tracks of jazz-inspired, rockabilly-scamming, ragtime-aping rock'n'roll, more heavily indebted to blues and honky-tonk than Woody Guthrie and Folkways.
It's easy to take the title of Bob Dylan's latest album, his first since 2001's "Love And Theft," as a joke. There isn't anything particularly modern about Modern Times' songs; their influences stop with the rock and roll of Dylan's youth. The sound also isn't particularly modern, thanks to the clean, plug-in-and-play…
Discover Modern Times by Bob Dylan released in 2006. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
Bob Dylan's last two albums, 'Time Out of Mind' and 'Love and Theft' were critically acclaimed, and 'Modern Times' continues that run, sounding like a mix of those two albums.
Most of his contemporaries may have eased into irrelevance ages ago, but Dylan's still got his mojo working... /> <meta name=
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