Down in the Groove

Back in the old days, when I used to walk through snowdrifts up to my hips wearing nothing but bandaids on my toes, there was a ritual known as new release record day. Record companies released the major new releases on Tuesdays. The record store that employed me stayed open past midnight on Mondays just to be the first place in town that people could buy the album they were dying to hear. The last new release I remember buying ‘round midnight was Bob Dylan’s ‘Time Out of Mind’ back in 1997.

These memories came rolling back the past few weeks with the out of nowhere news that Dylan’s first album of new songs in eight years, ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways,’ was about to be released. True to his most Boblike behavior, Dylan had surprised his fans by releasing three songs during the pandemic at midnight on random days with no warning no hype. The timing, with the stay at home to stay safe from a deadly virus apocalypse upon us, couldn’t have been better for those of us who have learned to view the world through the lens of Dylan’s many many many great songs. The three new songs didn’t disappoint (particularly ‘I Contain Multitudes’). They were stream of conscious yet deliberate songs that I can’t think of another songwriter being capable of writing, full of jarring juxtapositions and references to artists and songs and history from all over the place. And all of it seemed intuitively relevant in this strange new world of 2020.

In 2020, it’s no longer necessary to depend on your neighborhood record store staying open past midnight in order to hear a new release when it’s released. The semi-Luddites like me can now download it from multiple music services, and the kids can listen from streaming music services. I bought the iTunes pre-order and actually stayed up past midnight on release day to see that it was now available on my iPhone. I decided I wouldn’t stay up and listen, having a lot of work to do in the morning.

I got up early to hear what Bob had to say. Like 1997’s ‘Time Out of Mind’ all the people who had heard the new work prior to its release had written over the top positive things. The general consensus seemed to be it was unlike anything Bob had done in the past, yet it was connected to everything he has done in his career and could sit proudly next to his greatest works.

I went down to the kitchen to put on my pot of coffee and feed the boyz. I paired my iPad with the Bluetooth speakers in my kitchen. I pressed play and the opening track, ‘I Contain Multitudes,’ began to play. And then it stopped. I did some pigeon I/T work and noticed the Bluetooth pairing was no longer in place. So I ineffectively tried everything I could think of to re-establish the connection. I unplugged the speakers and tried again. Nothing. I restarted my iPad and when I opened iTunes my library was gone and I had to reload it. Seemed like someone (probably Russian hackers) didn’t want me to hear whatever Bob had to say. I remembered the days when listening to music meant dropping a needle into the grooves of a slab of vinyl. Things were so much simpler then.

So does ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ live up to the hype, the buzz? Strangely the two LPs it most reminds me of are ‘Time Out of Mind’ and ‘Blonde on Blonde,’ which really are very different LPs. The sparse arrangements echo ‘Time Out of Mind’ and the bluesy songs with playful and complex lyrics hark back to ‘Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat,’ and ‘Stuck Inside a Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,’ not to mention ‘Blonde on Blonde’ era outtakes like ‘She’s Your Lover Now,’ and ‘I’m Not There.’

The 10 songs on ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ contain connected themes referencing pop culture from the beginning of time yet applying name drops and inscrutable couplets to the contemporary world of a country coming apart at the seams. A friend called the lyric writing method “intertextual.” That’s perfect. Some have likened the lyrics as a continuation of Bob’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech where he referenced Moby Dick and Lou Reed and everything inbetween that had inspired him.

Early favorites are ‘I Contain Multitudes,’ (“I play Beethoven’s sonatas and Chopin’s preludes, I contain multitudes...”); ‘My Own Version of You,’ that sees the singer collecting body parts like Dr. Frankenstein to build his soulmate. It’s probably the darkest yet funniest song he’s ever written; and ‘Mother of Muses,’ which hit me personally as I’ve been thinking a lot, during the social distancing I invented throughout my life, about what the connection is between the handful of muses I’ve met in my life. “I'm falling in love with Calliope/She don't belong to anyone, why not give her to me?/She's speaking to me, speaking with her eyes/I've grown so tired of chasing lies/Mother of Muses, wherever you are/I've already outlived my life by far...”

Perhaps my favorite Dylan album (depending on my mood) is 1978’s ‘Street Legal’ that is Bob at his most confused. ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ is Bob at his most assured. There is a swagger, a deliberate obtuseness mixed with startling insight. He ain’t no false prophet (yet the timing of the release is another example of his observational finger on the world’s pulse similar to releasing ‘Love and Theft’ on September 11, 2001). The ten new songs prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he has always contained multitudes.