USA TODAY International Edition
Bob Dylan confronts death on new album
The times they are a- changin’, but Bob Dylan isn’t going anywhere. At 79, the mythic folk icon is having a pop culture moment: namedchecked in Renee Zellweger’s best actress Oscar speech as one of her heroes; the subject of a forthcoming biopic starring Timothee Chalamet; featured in recent documentaries “Once Were Brothers” and Martin Scorsese’s “Rolling Thunder Revue”; and the basis of Broadway musical “The Girl from the North Country,” whose score is loaded with Dylan deep cuts. Now there’s “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” out Friday, Dylan’s 39th studio album and his first of original songs since 2012’ s “Tempest,” a window into the singer’s dark psyche. Like “Tempest,” “Rough and Rowdy Ways” mines familiar thematic territory of love and mortality, but in frequently startling and unexpected ways. The mischievous “My Own Version of You,” for instance, imagines Dylan as a sort of lovesick Dr. Frankenstein roaming the Earth collecting body parts, in hopes of recreating his lost sweetheart. “One blast of lightning is all that I need and a blast of electricity that runs at top speed,” he sings in his trademark gravel. “I wanna bring someone to life, turn back the years, do it with laughter and do it with tears.” Other songs find Dylan coming face to face with death itself. On the worldweary “Black Rider,” a reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the singer tries to bargain for his life, threatening to hack off the Grim Reaper’s arm before dolefully accepting his fate. But he slyly manages to cheat Death on the bluesy “Crossing the Rubicon,” an ancient red river in Italy that’s located “three miles north of purgatory, one step from the great beyond.” “Rough and Rowdy Ways” is Dylan at his evocative, encyclopedic best. Featuring 10 songs over an hour- plus run time, the album brims with creative metaphors and sweeping references to history, literature and art. ( He name- checks nearly 75 songs just in the lyrics to “Murder Most Foul,” the album’s 17- minute closer.) His storytelling is freewheeling and opaque; you never quite know where a song is going until the next one has already begun. But somewhere in the tangents, he always finds truth. “I Contain Multitudes,” the album’s opening track, is among the most disarmingly beautiful songs of Dylan’s six- decade career. Likening himself to Anne Frank, Indiana Jones and The Rolling Stones in the same breath, the elusive songwriter explains how he’s a man of contradictions. “I paint landscapes, and I paint nudes,” he speak- sings over gentle acoustic guitar. “I contain multitudes.” For fans, it’s a melancholy but comforting assurance that in the twilight of his life, we still have a lot more to learn from Dylan.