Modern Times

We continue to live in an era of renaissance for Bob Dylan, who arguably is the most important American poet of the second half of the twentieth century (I know many snobbish poetry professors will sniff that lyrics are not poetry, but the hell with them). After the mid-seventies, just when I was becoming aware of him, Dylan went into a long period of irrelevancy, but came back into prominence in the late nineties with the first of a trio of records that has put him back on the charts and won him critical accolades and even Grammys. Modern Times, released this fall, is the third record in this trio, and I picked it up a week or two ago.

While the days of Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde are long gone, this record is still a pleasure to listen to. It begins with a shit-kicking roadhouse number called Thunder on the Mountain, which inexplicably references Alicia Keys:

I was thinkin' 'bout Alicia Keys, couldn't keep from crying
When she was born in Hell's Kitchen, I was living down the line
I'm wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be
I been looking for her even clear through Tennessee

There are also some bluesy ballads and forgettable love songs, but the transcendant Dylan kicks in on the eighth track, Nettie Moore. The song has a drum beat that practically winks at the listener, letting us know we're in for one of his wry, whimsical songs that contains his usual cryptic non-sequitors that still manage to say something profound:

I'm the oldest son of a crazy man,
I'm in a cowboy band
Got a pile of sins to pay for and I ain't got time to hide
I'd walk through a blazing fire, baby, if I knew you was on the other side

The album ends with an eight-minute plus dirge called Ain't Talkin', which could scare you if you listen with the lights out. In some ways it's reminiscent of A Hard Rain's Gone A-Fall, but instead of dazzling displays of language, this one is about silences:

As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden
The wounded flowers were dangling from the vine
I was passing by yon cool crystal fountain
Someone hit me from behind

Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Through this weary world of woe
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
No one on earth would ever know

With this trilogy (the first two records are Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft) and Martin Scorsese's brilliant documentary about Dylan's early years, No Direction Home, Dylan is one again front and center on the music scene, where he belongs, and I hope he's attracting a whole new generation of fans.