Modern Times by Bob Dylan

Returns to form are proclaimed every time Bob Dylan releases an album, and if Time Out of Mind was a masterpiece, I wasn’t too keen on Oh! Mercy.

So I didn’t rush out to get Modern Times when it came out to much acclaim and high sales in 2006. Yet its a remarkable piece of work. Just as Dylan had embraced country in the late 60s, here he chooses a musical tableau that’s virtually pre-rock, a suitably timeless backing to a series of highly emotionally charged songs. Here is the Dylan that he’d open up about in his autobiography Chronicles Vol.1, a musical magpie, taking in various music from different places – blues, rock and roll, country, folk, popular music – and knowing which bits to use and which bits to discard. Dylan as musical curator had come to the fore through his unexpected new career as a radio presenter, yet its what he’s always done.

As one of the main legends of rock music over the decades, he has more reason than most to have ownership of this wide legacy. So even if the musical tropes on Modern Times go back as far as the twenties, thirties and forties, it never once sounds like a nostalgic work. Lyrically its a spiritual work, not as downbeat as the old man’s last testament that Time Out of Mind seemed to be. In fact the more jaunty, less bluesy backing helps the song sing with an unexpected joi de vivre – but that’s been something that Dylan’s always done, alongside his more introspective work.

The songs are elemental, Biblical – with titles like Thunder on the Mountain and the Levee’s Gonna Break – a familiar territory for Dylan, but also for any rock and roll that beats with the heart of its origins. The stunning Workingmans Blues #2 may well be his best song since Hurricane.