Bob Dylan: Rough And Rowdy Ways - 2021
"Equal parts death-haunted and cantankerous" - Jon Pareles - The New York Times
In the middle of a pandemic of Biblical proportions, guess what? Somewhat appropriately, Bob Dylan, music's grand old Methuselah, puts out his first album of self-penned material since 2012's Tempest. There is something hauntingly apt about that, isn't there?
The album is a good one - a mix of lengthy, quiet, acoustic, often mortality-haunted lyric-fests and a few (three) tougher, industrial-strength blues workouts. This has been Dylan's way for a fair few decades now, so those who don't like it should stay away. Those who are ok with it are guaranteed to get some pleasure from this surprise release.
Let's consider what Julius Caesar would do....
I Contain Multitudes starts the album off with a slow, growled acoustic number in the style of some of the material on Modern Times, Love And Theft and Time Out Of Mind amongst others. The song contains instantly recognisable rhyme schemes and a suitable multitude of references - Edgar Allan Poe, All The Young Dudes, Anne Frank, The Rolling Stones, William Blake, Beethoven, Chopin - that show, indeed, that he and his thinking contains multitudes. It is a low-key but thoughtful and intellectually invigorating song. It sounds like the sort of material Dylan played on his radio show, full of folky, Americana feel. "I'm a man of contradictions, I'm a man of many moods..." he tells us - I think we knew that, Bob.
Like the Time Out Of Mind album, this one vacillates between slow acoustic narratives and stonking, big bluesers. Firmly in the latter category is the chugging, powerful False Prophet, which is one of Dylan's finest blues cuts for a fair time. Since 2012 in fact. It brings to mind the material from Together Through Life as well as that contained on Tempest.
My Own Version Of You sees the beat toned down but it still retains a deep, bluesy chug of a bass line as it backs Dylan's endlessly intriguing lyrics. "What would Julius Caesar do?" asks Dylan. He still has that ability to come up with simple but interesting lines. "I've studied Sanskrit and Arabic to improve my mind" is another good one. The old Biblical references he always loved are resurrected for this song too, lots of them. I can't keep quoting them. Musically it flows on like a gentle river that one can rely on to flow in the same fashion, year in, year out. Bob Dylan has been doing that for years too. You can still depend on him.
This is a beautiful, tender number with subtle, repeated “ooh”. backing vocals and lyrics concerning mortality, something that has been on Dylan’s mind for years. The subject is dealt with in even more direct, uncompromising style on the stark, haunting Black Rider. Dylan also gets unusually graphic when he says “the size of your cock will get you nowhere”. In fact, I don't think I can recall Dylan ever getting sexually graphic. The song has a haunting beauty to it, however.
Goodbye Jimmy Reed is a solid, muscular return to the blues. Dylan likes to remember old bluesmen occasionally, remember Blind Willie McTell. Mother Of Muses puts me in mind of Ring Them Bells from Oh Mercy. It is chock full of historical references - Sherman, Patton, Presley, Luther King Jr. “I’ve already outlived my life by far” croaks a baleful Dylan, most movingly. I challenge anyone who has followed this man’s music for many decades not to feel a bit tearful on hearing this.
“Three miles north of purgatory, one step from the great beyond” says Dylan on the slow blues of Crossing The Rubicon. Once again, this is a track overloaded with wonderful imagery and couplets that show why Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature. It sounds childishly simplistic to say something like that, doesn't it? But nobody does it like this. Dylan is just so special.
This has a lovely subtle accordion backing and some decidedly Van Morrison-esque lyrics about old radio stations and frequency bands. It is a marvellous, lengthy and quietly intoxicating song once more giving up many classic Dylan lines - “at twelve years old they put me in a suit and forced me to marry a prostitute” - what a line - that old Western fantasy imagery still coming through strong.
Then, of course, there is what may be Dylan's final track on his final album (then again, people have been saying that for years). Either way, Murder Most Foul goes down as his longest individual song, beating the slightly similar Highlands and the narrative Tempest. It is already notable for over fifty name-checks, again Van Morrison style, as Dylan quietly evokes all sorts of cultural and historical memories over a steady, metronomically regular bass, strings and gentle percussion backing. Dylan's reminiscences are inspired initially by the 1963 murder of John F. Kennedy, but as it progresses it becomes something much bigger, something that seems to act as a mirror to Dylan's whole life.
It is a great achievement and yes, I am sure that I won't be constantly sitting through its sixteen minutes plus, but you can be assured that whenever I do, I will appreciate it. It is a veritable cornucopia of beguiling wordsmithery. Hell, it's an incredibly moving work of genius - indeed, the same can be said of this album.
