Advertisement

Review: Bob Dylan's new album is trenchantly sharp and delightfully confounding

On his first record of original material since 2012, he discusses mortality, history, inspiration and pop culture.

June 18, 2020 at 9:15PM

Bob Dylan has a lot to say these days.

On "Rough and Rowdy Ways," his first album of original material in eight years, the enduringly revered bard sings about mortality, history, pop culture, love and inspiration — and a whole lot more. A lot more.

Like almost every Dylan album of self-penned tunes, "Rough and Rowdy Ways" demands numerous listenings to reveal itself. His longest 10-song collection ever is packed with rhyming couplets, references to literary and historical figures, and shout-outs to various musicians and songs.

His 39th studio album is filled with melancholy meditations and swaggering blues, self-styled mysteries and graceful elegies, and oblique self-references and quotable lines. At 79, Dylan remains as trenchantly sharp and delightfully confounding as ever.

The Minnesota-born singer-songwriter has always been a master of his own time. Without any advance notice, he dropped three selections from "Rough and Rowdy Ways" at midnight on three different Fridays this spring. Those tunes bookend the new 70½-minute double album.

Backed by gently plucked guitar, Dylan opens with "I Contain Multitudes," letting us know that he's a complex soul, "a man of contradictions, a man of many moods." Apparently content with his life, he has "no apologies to make."

And he fires off one of those Dylanesque lines that will be analyzed and quoted for years to come: "I sleep with life and death in the same bed."

Next up is the last of his three pre-album singles, "False Prophet," a sluggish shuffle delivered with a gnarling voice and a sideways eye. Is Dylan disowning all the acclaim heaped on him or trying to own it?

Advertisement
Advertisement

With shades of Victor Frankenstein, Dylan unleashes the very rhymey "My Own Version of You," in which the monster he creates — is it himself? — will play piano like Leon Russell and Liberace. Sonically, this has the flourish of neither colorful keyboardist but rather plenty of underwater surf guitar. With Dylan's vocals upfront over what sounds like a soundtrack to an old silent movie, this moody piece recalls the evocative jazz of Dylan's three recent collections of standards.

The laureate continues his soft croon on the dirge-like "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You." This is either Dylan's most romantic song in years or his best spiritual since his born-again days. In any case, he hopes "the gods go easy on me."

Backed by light flamenco guitar, Dylan offers his most dramatic vocalizing on "Black Rider," the story of an enigmatic character who has been on the job too long. Fiction or self-commentary? Dylan always keeps us guessing.

At least "Goodbye Jimmy Reed" refers to a real-life person, the late Chicago master of the blues shuffle. This ambling blues invigorates "Rough and Rowdy Ways" with a bracing shot of adrenaline.

"I can't sing a song I don't understand," proclaims Dylan, who seldom explains what he understands about his songs.

In interviews, including a rare one published last week in the New York Times, Dylan insists his songs "come from out of thin air." Maybe that's why he salutes "Mother of Muses," a delicately pretty Appalachian hymn, praising those creative goddesses for clearing the paths for Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King. Eventually, Dylan spins the song about himself, confessing his mortality.

Advertisement

"I've already outlived my life by far," he points out. "Free me from sin," he sings in a deep voice, "make me invisible like the wind."

He rides the wind on the home stretch of "Rough and Rowdy Ways," with arguably his most compelling and provocative closing trio of tunes on an album since the 1960s. Kicking off with stinging snarl, the bluesy yet spiritual "Crossing the Rubicon" celebrates a life well lived.

"Three miles north of purgatory, one step from the Great Beyond," Dylan declares to a mesmerizing, sinewy groove. "I stood between heaven and earth and I crossed the Rubicon."

A dreamy, accordion-accented dirge with a Western feel set in south Florida, the 9½-minute "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)" further explores mortality as he takes stock of himself once again.

"Death is on the wall," Dylan notes. Acknowledging that he's been truly blessed, he proudly states, "That's my story but not where it ends."

"Rough and Rowdy Ways" ends with "Murder Most Foul," a 17-minute epic that ostensibly chronicles the assassination of John Kennedy and its aftermath, including great cultural touchstones such as the Beatles, Woodstock and six dozen others, some pre-JFK. One could interpret this monumental rhyming collage as a commentary about a leader with a vision realized, or simply a yearning for the good old days. Either way, you can't forget a line like "I hate to tell you, mister, but only dead men are free."

Advertisement
Advertisement

In explaining one of his songs, for a change, Dylan told the New York Times: "I don't think of 'Murder Most Foul' as a glorification of the past or some kind of send-off to a lost age. It speaks to me in the moment."

That is what "Rough and Rowdy Ways" does — it's Dylan speaking to us in the moment, with a whole lot to say about us and himself.

Twitter: @JonBream • 612-673-1719

Advertisement
about the writer

about the writer

Jon Bream

Critic / Reporter

Jon Bream has been a music critic at the Star Tribune since 1975, making him the longest tenured pop critic at a U.S. daily newspaper. He has attended more than 8,000 concerts and written four books (on Prince, Led Zeppelin, Neil Diamond and Bob Dylan). Thus far, he has ignored readers’ suggestions that he take a music-appreciation class.

See Moreicon

More from Minnesota Star Tribune

See More
In this photo taken Monday, March 6, 2017, in San Francisco, released confidential files by The University of California of a sexual misconduct case, like this one against UC Santa Cruz Latin Studies professor Hector Perla is shown. Perla was accused of raping a student during a wine-tasting outing in June 2015. Some of the files are so heavily redacted that on many pages no words are visible. Perla is one of 113 UC employees found to have violated the system's sexual misconduct policies in rece

We respect the desire of some tipsters to remain anonymous, and have put in place ways to contact reporters and editors to ensure the communication will be private and secure.

card image
Advertisement
Advertisement

To leave a comment, .

Advertisement