Bob Dylan and the Haunting of America

The new Bob Dylan CD Together Through Life comes in a bright, plastic jewel case, but it may as well be cuneiform scratched on a baked clay tablet. Sure enough, though the shrink-wrap crackles and snaps at the unwrapping, the dust of a century and half of American music blows up into your face:

“Beyond Here Lies Nothing” shambles to life like a dusty corpse shuffling to a slow and sloppy rumba. Dylan oversees the proceedings: part funeral director, part carnival barker, commanding ancient instruments and sentiments with a wink and a throaty growl.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, tonally, musically, lyrically, is “I Feel A Change Comin’ On”- imagine a sunny spring stroll down a country lane with your heart subsumed with thoughts of a new and tender love, and you have an idea of what this tune will do to you.

That Dylan can command these two diametrically opposite songs (on the same album, no less) is testimony to his expansive talent – he is large, he contains multitudes, and is frighteningly comfortable with all the sides of his protean and encompassing nature.

It is sad to have to report, then, that “Together Through Life” as a collection is merely excellent and nowhere near the high standard set by his recent late career renaissance. It is a must have for Dylan purists only – for everyone else, the two aforementioned tracks are all that are needed.

Far superior is last autumn’s horrifically overlooked Tell Tale Signs, a collection of outtakes, alternate versions, and live performances taken from the last twenty years, from 1989’s Oh Mercy to 2006’s Modern Times. It is a revelation, easily placed alongside Blood on the Tracks and Blonde on Blonde as among his very best. It is a collection full of glorious gems inconceivably left off of the albums for which they were originally recorded.

“Most of the Time,” for example, from the Daniel Lanois produced Oh Mercy, is a slow burn, electric and moody with murky production and instrumentation. The version which appears on Tell Tale Signs, however, features just Dylan and his acoustic guitar, a sped-up take which showcases his sinewy and preternatural phrasing as he slips the complex verses in between invisible spaces in the rhythm.

Then there are the new tunes (new to our ears, at least) – “Someday Baby” is a heart wrenching chronicle of a one-sided relationship; the narrator gives and gives but receives nothing but abuse and neglect in return. He wearily accepts this fate, however, as the only way he can be close to his beloved.

“Born in Time” and “Huck’s Tune” are subtle demons – at first they leave little impression. Successive listens, however, peel back layers and layers of depth and ambiguity. The live versions of “Ring Them Bells” and “Lonesome Day Blues” are blistering reminders of how hard Dylan can rock when he wants to (and, I might add, what an underrated guitar player he is).

And then there’s “Can’t Escape From You,” as Goth as hell and not going to take it anymore. A more funeral dirge cannot be found this side of Joy Division, and indeed here Dylan shows bands like The Sisters of Mercy to be the effete pretenders we always knew they were.

The fact that “Cant Escape From You” was hidden until now will confound musicologists for decades: What for any other artist would be a career peak was for Dylan, it seems, an afterthought. There is something heartbreaking about this song, but also something vaguely sinister – Dylan’s voice, pushed now to near its seventh decade, drips with more than a little knowing of the grave, like Odin swinging from the Tree of Life, the wisdom of the dead upon his lips.

So my advice: Skip the new record and get Tell Tale Signs. Both albums, however, have something in common – they occupy a musical space that doesn’t really exist anymore. Dylan synthesizes everything from Hillbilly Appalachian to Harlem jazz to Nashville Western to Scotty Moore rockabilly. All of these uniquely American sounds seep from his pores – he knows this music, loves it, and lives it. He is both its last and greatest practitioner.

Dylan lives, but he is already a ghost, haunting us with the harmonies of a long dead Republic.

Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, and Townhall. His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.