First the facts. This is Dylan’s 44th album in as many years and his first collection of new songs since 2001. Significantly, it’s also his first release since the Zimmerman industry went into overdrive with his memoir Chronicles, the Scorsese documentary No Direction Home and his recent DJ-ing exploits. Semi-officially, Modern Times is being touted as the third in a trilogy that began with 1997’s Time Out Of Mind and the follow up Love and Theft. Recorded with his current touring band and produced by Dylan himself, it treads very similar territory sonically with that raw, live feel and no-nonsense, almost 1950’s production that made his last two albums so compelling.
But as always with Dylan it’s down to the songs, the lyrics and the themes – and here they are as wide-ranging as ever, with ruminations on everything from the state of the world to his own state of mind. It opens with ‘Thunder On The Mountain’, a bluesy shuffle with that now-familiar template in the style of Elvis’ ‘Mystery Train’. Then it’s straight into the post-war swing jazz of ‘Spirit On The Water’ with its gorgeous melody and a direct challenge from Dylan: “You think I’m over the hill, think I’m past my prime / Let me see what you’ve got /We can have a whopping good time.”
‘When The Deal Goes Down’ could be a meditation on both mortality and love but with Dylan you never really know: “We live and we die but we know not why but I’ll be with you when the deal is done.” He adopts a Nat King Cole crooner mode on the supper-club jazz of ‘Beyond the Horizon’ though the familiar line "‘neath the stardust moon above” sounds like it came from the handbook of classic American songwriting. ‘Workingman’s Blues’ is a scorching ballad on a par with the Time Out Of Mind track ‘Standing In The Doorway’, while ‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’ evokes classic blues imagery and is all the more poignant in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Meanwhile Dylan’s voice is ragged, cracked and increasingly frail throughout the album, but it’s still a magnificent thing to behold.
As with so many Dylan albums in the past it ends with an epic: ‘Ain’t Talking’ clocks in at just under nine minutes and like the never-ending tour, sounds like it’ll go on forever. “Someday you’ll be glad to have me around,” he sings at one point and you can almost see him grinning with quiet satisfaction at having come up with yet another near masterpiece.