Review - Together Through Life

Artist: Bob Dylan
Album: Together Through Life
Record Label: Columbia Records
Producer(s): Jack Frost
Release Date: April 28, 2009
Genre: Folk Rock, Blues Rock
Strong Points: Strong album all the way through; excellent production values, lyricism and instrumentation; very retro feel
Weak Points: None
Technical Score: A
Artistic Score: A+
Final Score (not an average): A+
Moral Warnings: None

There’s no in-between with Bob Dylan: you love him or you hate him. Call him what you will, Dylan has consistently reinvented himself through his albums. From troubadour to gospel man, from prophet to blues-man, Dylan’s music has always proven surprising throughout his four-decade long career. With this newest release, Dylan follows up his trio of dark, spiritual blues albums with an album that is not so much a reinvention but an evolution of his previous blues work.

The previous three albums that Dylan released, 1997’s “Time Out of Mind,” 2001’s “Love and Theft” and 2006’s “Modern Times,” dealt heavily in the murk of blues, and tackled subjects such as love, death and aging. There was a hopelessness to all three albums as well as a commonality in theme that united the three, causing some critics to hail them as a trilogy, a claim that Dylan denied in subsequent interviews.

For this, Bob Dylan’s 33rd studio album, Dylan pursued a feel similar to that of the 1950s Chicago blues scene, specifically that of Chess Records, with a distinctive bass and accordion added to evoke that particular sound. However, the album still sounds very much in line with the previous three, even though it feels rougher and somehow brighter. Dylan doesn’t so much bemoan love here as praise it. Where in 1997 he cried, “You left me standing in the doorway crying/Suffering like a fool,” here his intent is stated in the title.

“Together Through Life” begins with a confession of love to another. Dylan’s voice is immediate and needful. “Don’t know what I’d do without it/Without this love that we call ours,” Dylan croons on opening track Beyond Here Lies Nothin’, his voice weaving between blues guitars and a slowly pulsing band, propelling the music forward. The track that follows, Life is Hard, is filled with nostalgia. The guitars are lightly plucked and a slide wails in the background, texturing the music. At its base, Life is Hard is a song of longing and need, not unlike the previous track but from the perspective of someone who feels very much alone.

More along the lines of a classic blues song is My Wife’s Home Town, which plays lines juxtaposed against guitar melody. Dark and brooding, but with a playful side that still hasn’t left Dylan’s writing, the song jumps between indecision and devotion, despair and justification.

The rest of the album deals with a variety of issues, but all of the songs tend to be linked through concepts of need and desire. On If You Ever Go to Houston, the narrator bargains with an unknown person to help him find his lost love: “Last time I saw her was at the Magnolia Motel/If you help me find her you can be my pal/Mister Policeman, can you help me find my gal?” Jolene is an ode to devotion, perhaps unrequited, and This Dream of You rambles in a folksy way, continuing the idea of devotion to one’s love. Not one song fails to find its mark, resulting in an album that continues Bob Dylan’s recent string of successes.

Like much of Dylan’s later work, “Together Through Life” focuses on very personal, but immediately relatable, songs. The rage from his early work is gone, but so is Dylan the Confessor, last seen on 1975’s “Blood on the Tracks” and 1976’s “Desire.” Still, this is the first album since those two that takes such a positive view of love. Prior to this, it seemed like Dylan was testing the waters of the blues after a decade long hiatus from the genre, but even then he sounded comfortable. This album is the result of a band that fully realizes what it’s capable of. It’s the result of a songwriter who is comfortable in his own skin and comfortable experimenting with what he does best. Ultimately, “Together Through Life” is better for this experimentation. The raw sound, the cuts, the jagged edges, everything feels deliberate and flawless, though the running time seems almost too brief, especially considering the length of his previous albums. This is truly the work of a master.

Album Highlights:
Jolene
Beyond Here Lies Nothin’
This Dream of You
I Feel a Change Comin’ On
It’s All Good
Shake Shake Mama

-Drew Regensburger (drew@revolve21.com)