Together Through Life [Import]

Just bought this last week and have listened to it three times. I hate to say it but it ain't gettin' any better. I guess it was inevitable that he couldn't keep it up forever. In my humble opinion the last three albums (Modern Times, Love and Theft and Time Out of Mind) rank amongst the best he's ever done and that, friends and neighbours, is saying something. It's not that this is a bad record, it's just kind of boring. Sort of mundane and repetitive. Love and Theft, for example, just kept hitting me over the head with one stone cold classic after another in a delicious and varied stew of different styles and moods. Here it seems Dylan mines the same field repeatedly to the point where during my first listen - God forgive me - I actually wanted it to end. I remember saying to myself that maybe he should have gone for a new live album with that killer touring group he's got now and included a couple of the better tunes here on that. The rest would probably have been better served being left for future versions of the Bootleg series, a context in which the frustrating, one-note similarity of these tunes would be much less noticable. Oh well, he's earned the right to record whatever he wants and we'll still eagerly anticipate the next one whenever that may be. I think a fair analogy would be this album, coming at this point in time, is kinda like Street Legal coming on the heels of Desire and Blood on the Tracks; it's not that it's a terrible piece of work by any means, just a little disappointing after his recent rise back into the stratosphere of sheer brilliance that he and very few others have ever occupied.

Good disc and would recommend this to Dylan fans. Tghe speed of delivery was fast. It adds to one hundred Dylan discs I have of him and it reminds me of hoe fleeting life really is.

First, to those that whine whenever Bob Dylan (or anyone else, I suspect) releases something that, in the whiner`s parlance, `is not a classic`: go and listen to the classics, then! What is this sick mindset (Brando was right) that seeks to penalize artists for having created something then always comparing whatever they do to that `classic`? Is there some competition I am not aware of?

Second, I like this cd. Of the last 4 cds Dylan has released (which I think mostly worked) this is the one that I have listened to most, over and over again. I think the music is generally more accessable. Modern Times had a sound that seemed that it should work but somehow didnt reach the dynamic ranges that make music interesting; it just didnt come across. TTL doesnt have that problem. Maybe this style (blues, tex-mex) is more conducive to getting captured in studio. It is more straight-forward than MT - it feels less arranged and perhaps this is where Dylan remains strongest, though some think the `one-take` recording style he has tended to employ throughout was outgrown in the 80s.

Lyrics are where most get caught up in this `not a classic` bleating. The lyrics are not Visions of Johanna or Desolation Row (note to whiners: those are already written; go give em a spin). The lyrics work, they fit, they are nuanced and not tacked on. They dont contain the impossible stories and long distance scenarios and casts of thousands, but they fit the tradition from which the music is derived, giving the overall cd a chance to sound like a project, rather than a bunch of songs.

Such qualities are subjective, despite what the critics and their mortgage lenders would have you believe. Ultimately, it comes down to how you feel after the last song ends - do you want to listen again or not. If you have any trust in the merits of this particular artist then you may like this cd. Or you may not. Good luck. (I give it `5 stars` because that step is mandatory. personally, i think such quantification crude and useless.)