The new Bob Dylan CD Together Though Life is out. Today

Bob Dylan, Pawtucket RI 2006, older raw and mean blues

With story from the San Francisco Chronicle

The CD is out but I have to wait for UPS from Amazon – saving money costs a few extra days.

I scoffled the new video and put it on YouTube last week. 3,500 people have seen it so far. (Update – after 100,000 views WebSheriff asked us to take the video down.)

The new album is gritty, raw blues. It swings and its mean, not soft and innocent. Dylan is older, sadder and maybe the victim of his own life. Who knows. Can’t wait. How much longer can I wait. 

San Francisco Chronicle, Joel Selvin

The offhand, crudely informal atmosphere of the new Bob Dylan album, “Together Through Life,” is a deceit.

Beneath the apparently tossed off blues tracks and carelessly drawled vocals lies a master of details and pungent, piquant observations, couched as old blues songs.

The music feels fresh, organic, and Dylan imbues each song with a powerful sense of storytelling.

He can be sentimental (“This Dream of You”), acerbic (“My Wife’s Home Town”) or even gently sarcastic (“It’s All Good”), but the songs feel less written than pulled out of the air, little wisps of dreams, half remembered, half fantasy.

‘Beyond Here Lies Nothing’

The band sounds as if Dylan found them playing in some cantina, although the musicians are his well-tested road band. All of the songs are sung by this ragged, weary, impossibly gravelly voice perfectly suited to the sensibilities of the pieces.

Latter period Dylan (left, performing at the Pawtucket Arts Festival in Rhode Island in 2006) is turning out to be some of his deepest, richest work.

“Together Through Life” is another brilliant, sure-handed outing by one of the few certified greats still living up to his legend.