There’s a movie out soon modelled on the artistic persona of Bob Dylan. One of the four “Dylans” is played by Cate Blanchette, in an Oscar-tipped performance. Unfortunately this is reawakening Bob’s-a-genius nonsense.
The revival of the singer’s fortunes can be traced back to 1997, when he emerged with an album called Time Out of Mind. Prior to this, Dylan’s career had been sitting somewhere between the obscurity of Cat Stevens in his “reborn” phase and the forgotten comeback album by Nils Lofgren.
His sound has always seemed to be the stuff that drunken bars are made of: knock-knock-knocking over barstool bores. Words like “genius”, “poet” and “masterpiece” were being flung around by sycophantic music critics in 1997 like pieces of wet dung. The album became a multi-award winner. The singer currently gets treated like the Dalai Lama of the music industry.
Let’s put that “comeback” album on for a listen.
So then, how does it feel?
Well, the first thing one notices on opening track Love Sick is how nakedly, hauntingly bad the man’s voice had become (not that it was ever much good anyway). All those years of put-on vocals and loud, mosquito-like droning into mics clearly must have taken their toll. On Time Out of Mind we have the voice unplugged, as it were, stripped to its horrible quivering rawness.
The softer the singing, the deeper the cracks. The singing is painfully juxtaposed on the opening track with a full string orchestra, which gives an embarrassingly grandiose feel to the cornflake narrative of Dylan being “sick of this kind of love”.
The next track, Dirt Road Blues, promises the obvious, and then delivers some — a monotonous bandwagon riff that sounds like a cover version of another cover version of a pub standard belted out by a beer-bellied outfit in some seedy bar on a badly attended night. Wonder if Dylan stayed seated for this one live. By this stage his voice starts sounding like a cockroach.
As the album crawls on, things don’t look up: more ballads about a lovesick Dylan being left standing in doorways and so on. Someone, please give the man a blanket.
By the time the 10th track, Can’t Wait, comes along, one really can’t wait — for the album to finish.
“My eyes are so tired, my brain is so wired,” sings Dylan on Love Sick.
That’s exactly how the listener feels after this tiresome time in Bob Dylan’s mind.
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