Bob Dylan (Columbia) -

Wed, Dec 31st - 5:00 pm

Bob Dylan Singing the workingman's blues.

Like the last couple of Dylan records — 1997's Time Out of Mind and 2001's Love & Theft — Modern Times starts in medias res. The opening track, "Thunder on the Mountain," sounds like the band was in the middle of a jam session when a microphone was turned on. That makes the disc more like the freewheelin' Love & Theft and less like the sublime and nuanced Time Out of Mind. Even though countless rock scribes (not to mention the savvy people at Columbia Records) see Modern Times as the third chapter in a trilogy that includes Time Out of Mind and Love & Theft, there's not really that much continuation.

For starters, Dylan sounds most comfortable on piano here. If you've seen him live recently, that shouldn't come as a surprise. He's spent more of his time on stage behind the keys than on guitar and harmonica. In keeping with that, "Spirit on the Water" is a gentle piano ballad, albeit one that's ultimately of little consequence, even though Dylan turns in a nice harmonica solo at song's end. The waltz "Beyond the Horizon" sounds like it's from an earlier time and is also fairly forgettable, in part because it's just so low-key.

"When the Deal Goes Down" is yet another piano ballad, but this one fares slightly better. Dylan sounds a bit like recent touring partner Willie Nelson as he snarls lines like "I've felt transient joys/I know they're not what they seem." The same goes for "Nettie Moore," which finds Dylan adopting a raspy voice and singing to a sparse arrangement.

The album's got its vaguely political moments, too. "Workingman's Blues #2" is a blow-by-blow account of all the country's ills, starting with low wages and ending with references to the countless conflicts going on. It's no "Blowin' in the Wind," though. It's hard not to think of the bluesy "The Levee's Gonna Break" as some kind of reference to Katrina and the disaster that took place in New Orleans, even though the song generalizes and doesn't specify. But, in an irony Dylan is probably all too aware of, the songs are written as if they could be about events taking place years ago. "Modern times," indeed.

The real standouts, however, are the spunky numbers that prove Dylan's still got some fight left in him. "Rollin' and Tumblin'" features some great slide guitar work and "Someday Baby" is as feisty as "Maggie's Farm" and features a blues guitar riff running through it that's gritty in a White Stripes/Black Keys kinda way. The album closer, "Ain't Talkin'," is an intense slowburner made all the more powerful by Dylan's eerie vocals. He almost sounds possessed as he whispers, "ain't talking/just walking/through the world mysterious and vague."

His 44th album (a remarkable achievement in and of itself) and first in five years, Modern Times doesn't have anything quite as memorable as "Times Have Changed," the Academy Award-winning tune Dylan wrote for the 2000 film Wonder Boys, but it's still evocative in that way that only Dylan is.

music@freetimes.com