Bob Dylan - new album just out on Tidal - Rough and Rowdy Ways

It's an unlikely question but it's one I have been asking myself lately, is this Bib Dylan's best album? 

For sure the range of vocal and musical expression found here is not a patch on that found on his best work eg the drug fuelled 65-6 trilogy that altered the course of popular music.

He's much older now and the band, excellent players no doubt, are here to provide a solid, consistent, pulsing, hypnotic landscape for his words.

No flashy or fancy stuff here at all.

Lyrically there is a lot of disillusionment, regret, bitterness, anger, reflection from start to finish, only occasionally softened with rare hints of humour. It's often overlooked but Dylan always had humour.

His vision here is on history, mortality, loss of reason, rejuvenation and hope for redemption. I can't recall any other album of his with such an encyclopedic compass of subject matter and sensation. 

Even those peaks of 2012s Tempest or 2001s Love and Theft hardly managed such a kaleidoscopic distillation as this one. This one broke me down further and make me think more. 

The final track, Murder Most Foul comes packaged on a separate CD, quite rightly so. It stands alone in more ways than one.

Broad, majestic and all encompassing it's a work of the highest maturity. 


As for the recording quality, its simply first rate - warm and full of texture and decay. It sounds good on everything I've played it on - TV, headphones, Bluetooth speaker etc.

Of course it sounds better on a full range system, bigger scale, depth and bandwidth, intimacy etc, but then that's no more than what you'd expect from an artist who genuinely cares about how his work is displayed.

It's also available for a free listen on Dylan's own YouTube channel. 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kqAopNs8YTdcVv-aTY0fBZqiEWI4jmtgI

snackeyp,

Yes, great albums both. Different but share that Dylan trademark of awesome closing tracks as on many of his best albums eg, 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue', 'Desolation Row', 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands', 'Sara', 'Sugar Baby' etc.

Time Out of Mind is near perfect. 'Not Dark Yet' could break your heart.


rpeluso,

I probably need to give Modern Times a few more spins. Maybe 2001s  Love and Theft had raised my expectations a bit too high. 

I remember I couldn't latch on to any of the songs immediately the way I could with Murder Most Foul, Crossing the Rubicon, Black Rider etc. 

I think I was also listening to at the same time as Morrissey's Ringleader of the Tormentors which was a little more immediate back then. 

Sometimes a good way for me to know if I'm going to like something is to play it in the car a few times. I don't like playing originals in the car so I'll rip a copy especially. 

snackeyp,

'Ironically, his late-career records are some of my favorites.'




Love and Theft                 2001
Tempest                            2012
Rough and Rowdy Ways 2020

In my opinion these 3 are amongst his best ever studio albums. The only career hiatus I think was that decade between Street Legal (78) and Oh Mercy (89). 

Springsteen, once again is the only other artist that springs to mind as a comparison for both quality and longevity. 

Quite unusual really, as most of his rivals tended to barely have a golden creative period for a decade at best.

Somehow, despite everything, Dylan's defied the odds. Only he may know how.

tom8999,

If ever an album fitted it’s times - it’s this one. Just like the Sex Pistols ’Nevermind the Bollocks’ and the Beatles ’Sgt Pepper’ ’Rough and Rowdy Ways’ has captured the essence of its times.

The whole world is obviously going through some very strange days and Bob Dylan has provided us a with a great album to take some kind of an historical recap.

They’ll be listening to this one a 100 years from now, hopefully onboard some luxury space station.