Disc 334 is...Time Out Of Mind
Artist: Bob Dylan
Year of Release: 1997
What’s Up With The Cover?: An out-of-focus Bob sits in front of a studio panel, looking a bit fuzzy and, to be perfectly honest, underdressed. Maybe he wasn't told that the album photo shoot was that day. More likely, being Bob, he didn't care. You can do that when you're Bob Dylan.
How I Came To Know It: This was just me drilling through the Bob Dylan collection. I probably got this record in the early oughts, a few years after it came out. I had a lot of Dylan by that time, and recognized the title as one that had received recent critical acclaim.
How It Stacks Up: According to wikipedia (which is always right, of course), Dylan has 34 studio albums. I only have 17 of those, though I have plans to get more when it feels right. Of the 17 I have, "Time Out of Mind" holds up surprisingly well. That said, the competition is fierce, so I couldn't put it higher than 11th or 12th depending on my mood.
Rating: 4 stars.
"Time Out Of Mind" represents a comeback album of sorts for Dylan. It won three Grammys (although that means less and less with every passing year) and it is ranked among the top 500 albums on Rolling Stone's website (this also meaning less and less with every passing year).
More notebably, while not having any recognizeable hits on it, it was Dylan's first album to crack the top 10 since 1979's "Slow Train Coming." This is ridiculous considering how good 1989's "Oh Mercy" is, but I'll talk about that when I roll it.
Like "Oh Mercy", "Time Out of Mind" benefits from a strong effort from superstar producer Daniel Lanois. Lanois is famous for his big, atmospheric sound most famous on huge albums like Peter Gabriel's "So", Emmylou Harris' "Wrecking Ball" and a whole slough of U2 records including "The Unforgettable Fire", "The Joshua Tree" and "All That You Can't Leave Behind."
"Time Out Of Mind" is Dylan returning to a softer, acoustic sound, less folksy but much more heavily influenced by traditional blues, and it finds a good match with Lanois' ambient-sound styles. He gives the sparse arrangements more volume, and he smooths out the rough-edges of Dylan's scratchy voice without going so far as to remove his signature sound. I wouldn't want to hear every Dylan album produced by Lanois, but I love the way they work together on this material.
For all the big sound that Lanois layers in, the songs themselves are mostly introspective. They are songs about lost love, bad love and unrequited love. This far into his career, Dylan has a lot of experiences to draw on, and he makes this oldest of topics new again.
There are traditional 'woe is me' blues music on this record, like "Love Sick" and "'Til I Fell In Love With You", which as someone just starting to blossom into a blues fan, I really enjoyed. These songs are all-in-one trips through the evolution of the art form. He starts with basic blues riffs, adds in the smokey bar sound of sixties and seventies rock, and then slows it back down and backs out the loudness so you can see the song laid out for you. Coupled with Lanois' lazy atmosphere, they almost stray into pop music.
There are also songs that are more folk rock. Unlike Dylan's early sixties work, these songs aren't trying to be particularly clever with the lyrics, nor (with the exception of "Highlands") is he going for laughs. Instead, he is focused on simple language designed to convey emotion as direct as possible. There are many great songs on this album that follow this approach, but my favourite is "Not Dark Yet". Here's a sample:
"Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind
She put down in writing what was in her mind
I just don't see why I should even care
It's not dark yet but it's gettin' there"
This stanza, like a lot on this record had me thinking about Hemmingway, who was so great at expressing complex emotion through simple language.
There were places listening where some of the lyrics sounded so plain that they were cliched, but when I went back to find an example, everything read beautifully. Maybe it was just Bob's easy delivery that had me thinking he wasn't getting at a point.
The record is an unweildy 72 minutes (the vinyl version is a two record set), and I think I was ready for it to be over before it was for that reason. At the same time, there are only eleven songs, and I couldn't find a single one that needed to be cut.
The final track, "Highlands" is more than a little bloated at 16:31. Like the record as a whole, despite its meandering nature, I would be hard put to cut it down any further. At my best, I don't think I could edit it down by more than two and a half minutes.
"Highlands" is a bit goofy, but so is Dylan at times, and we rightfully love him for it. There is a particularly clever exchange in the song between him and a waitress in a diner taking his order and later trying to convince him to draw a sketch of her. The beginning of their exchange goes:
"Well it must be a holiday, there's nobody around
She studies me closely as I sit down
She got a pretty face, and long white shiny legs
I say, 'tell me what I want'
She says 'you probably want hard-boiled eggs.'"
Strangely, when I went to look up my favourite line on Dylan's own website, the lyrics were totally different, following a more traditional dialogue with her asking what he wants and him replying "soft-boiled eggs." This is just Dylan messing with his own product. He likes doing that, and I suspect he likes it even more if it bothers us. It didn't bother me, although I prefer the quirky version on the recording.
In fact, very little of this record's quirks bothered me. Most were inspiring, and by the end of my third listen I found I had upgraded a record I thought was 3 stars all the way to 4.
Best tracks: Love Sick, Standing In The Doorway, Tryin' To Get To Heaven, Not Dark Yet, Highlands
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