After previously writing, often at length, about music he has created at different stages of his illustrious career, for the first time in the near three year existence of this blog has come a new Bob Dylan album – ‘ROUGH AND ROWDY WAYS‘ released this week.
Indeed, as the years slipped by since his last album of new material ‘Tempest‘ (2012), it began to appear rock might have witnessed its last definitive roll from the man acknowledged as its single most creative force of the past sixty years.
Yet during the past eight he has only added to his extraordinary body of work with compilations, retrospective live sets and a three album interpretation of the ‘Great American Songbook‘ – ‘Shadows in the Night‘ (2015), ‘Fallen Angels‘ (2016) and ‘Triplicate‘ (2017) – these an interesting, if hardly innovative career move, Rod Stewart by virtue of a more adaptable voice and looking more salubrious better in a suit, carrying it off to much better effect.
TWO SONGS SAY SO MUCH – Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne each return with a gem….
All of which began to suggest that Bob Dylan, wordsmith and song dramatist extraordinaire, had nothing of note left to say, having spent his previous thirty eight studio albums being the last word on lyrical poignancy and symbolism.
But then in the spring of this year and only a few days into the Coronavirus lock down came ‘Murder Most Foul.’ Running to almost seventeen minutes, its centrepiece the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, it revealed that far from being mute Dylan was in ‘hind leg off a donkey‘ mode – but this was not wordiness for the sake of it, the enthralling word play showing his ability to conjure vivid images was still in the rudest of health.
As it was such an engrossing piece, portents for the new album were immediately encouraging, but this being Dylan naturally there is a twist – ‘Murder Most Foul‘ included in the album package, but as a stand alone song on a separate CD, ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways‘ therefore judged as a single nine track collection with a bonus cut, rather than double album.
So much for the lay out and thus onto ‘reviewing’ – or perhaps more pertinently when considering fresh work from the most revered living artist in any field – ‘reacting’ to the cultural milestone that is a new Bob Dylan LP.
Having long since passed the point of separating the man from the music, or in fact from the legacy which proceeds it, the only standards ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways‘ can be measured against are those Bob Dylan has defined and continues to redefine – yet few can claim to fully under understand the complexities of his work, when songs decades old are still being debated with regard to their meaning.
Those infused with great expectations for the record on hearing ‘Murder Most Foul‘ will not be disappointed by ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways‘ as the breadth of his storytelling make it a compelling listen.
Driven by mysterious characters, strange allusions, historical and literary references, there is hardly an engaging melody to be heard, Dylan instead delivering his gravelly voiced narratives over sparse background instrumentation. There is scant notion of him being part of a musicians ensemble in the traditional sense and although his tales have the depth of say ‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts‘ – six of the nine pieces register at over six minutes – they make few concessions, as in that case, to grabbing the listener with a melodic hook.
With its broad sweep of well known names (‘Edgar Allan Poe, ‘Anne Frank,’ ‘Indiana Jones,’ ‘the Rolling Stones,’ ‘William Blake‘, ‘Beethoven‘ and ‘Chopin‘) ‘I Contain Multitudes‘ follows on from ‘Murder Most Foul‘ yet feels a strangely downbeat way to begin proceedings, the couplet, ‘Tell me, What’s next? What shall we do? Half my soul, baby, belongs to you,’ sounding like something he could written in 1963, when said at the same pace as ‘I gave her my heart, but she wanted my soul.’
The tempo increases with ‘False Prophet‘ whose deceptively aggressive lyric is full of grit and braggadocio, the blues swagger breaking into Chuck Berry styled riffing toward the end. Of the other upbeat tracks ‘Goodbye Jimmy Reed‘ has a similar 12-bar blues structure, Dylan name checking one of his blues-men heroes throughout a witty lyric brimming with great cheeky grin lines, ‘you won’t amount to much, the people all said, cause I didn’t play guitar behind my head,’ being up there with the best.
‘Crossing the Rubicon‘ comes out of the same shuffle and chug suitcase, the slow-blues talking of the vocal reminiscent of moments from his 1997 opus ‘Time Out of Mind‘, the off-mic ‘Oh Lord‘ halfway through the song, a sublime moment of scene-setting.
On ‘My Version of You,’ Dylan conjures a dark, eerie world as images of Pacino, Brando, Leon Russell and Liberace abound, but at its core is ‘Frankenstein‘ by Mary Shelley, the protagonist intent on assembling body parts for the person they wish to create. The lolloping carousel music builds up each time Dylan reaches the end of a verse, only to be brought back down when he ponders what attributes to give his creation – the story brought to a climax with ‘Gonna jumpstart my creation to life, I wanna bring somebody to life, turn back the years, do it with laughter, do it with tears.’
In contrast ‘I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You‘ is a gentle prayer to the spiritual fulfillment and contentment of love. To the background of a slow waltz, it maintains a beautifully poetic and atmospheric flow from the opening line (‘I’m sittin’ on my terrace lost in the stars‘) through to the understated plea of the ending ‘I traveled from the mountains to the sea, I hope the Gods go easy with me.’
With ‘Black Rider‘ Dylan draws an enigmatic character profile whose identity could be that of the Grim Reaper or an assassin. To the distant strains of gently strummed mandolins, the listener could be forgiven in thinking they have stumbled into a spaghetti western, the line, ‘let all your earthly thoughts be a prayer,’ containing enough resonance for any allegorical setting.
The feel of empty, wide open spaces also emerges in ‘Mother of Muses‘ a campfire folk ballad bearing similarity to ‘Ring Them Bells‘ from ‘Oh Mercy.’ The appearance in the lyric of Sherman, Montgomery, Scott, Zhukov, Patton, Presley and Martin Luther King shape a reflective paean to guidance from a higher power. As he bequeaths to this exalted source, Dylan (79) reminds himself (and us) of mortality with the phrase ‘I’ve already outlived my life by far.’
Things come to a close with the lengthy ‘Key West‘ (Philosopher Pirate). This near ten minute narrative is part travelogue, contains observations on the 1901 assassination of US President William McKinley, a love letter to the Florida location of the title, with more literary references (Ginsberg, Corso, Kerouac) thrown in for good measure.
The tale then makes a sharp left turn (with Dylan there is always a reluctance to say ‘unexpected‘), as the narrator suddenly reveals that at the age of twelve he was forced to marry a prostitute – adding to the sudden shift in emphasis by stating: ‘That’s my story, but not where it ends.’
With only a chorus to follow, the song has a vague, open-ended feel and if venturing a line of criticism amid the widespread critical acclaim ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways‘ has been greeted with, it would be that a couple of songs have no sense of conclusion – which is not saying a happy or sad ending is required, more an extra stanza in relation to an epilogue.
That said, Dylan takes us on one hell of a journey in reaching the final act of these nine musical novellas, arriving on the back of lyrical passages that are absorbing and serene in equal measure.
After eight years away his absence has made this heart grow fonder and while ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways‘ is not quite at the era-defining stature of at least half a dozen entries in the Dylan canon, it is an excellent album – a strong entry into his pantheon of acclaimed work.
Depending on the grading scale, it rates at A- or 4.5/5 and while just shy of a masterpiece, Dylan still reigns as the master.
Welcome back Bob – we’ve missed you.
ROUGH and ROWDY WAYS (track listing): I Contain Multitudes/False Prophet/My Own Version of You/I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You’/Black Rider/Goodbye Jimmy Reed/Mother of Muses/Crossing the Rubicon/Key West (Philosopher Pirate). Disc Two: Murder Most Foul;
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NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of ‘MONTY’S DOUBLE‘ – an acclaimed thriller now available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle book.
