Dylan release reveals new layers
When Bob Dylan released “Time Out of Mind” in 1997, it was heralded as a late-career masterpiece featuring songs such as “Make You Feel My Love,” “Love Sick” and “Not Dark Yet.”
Now, a quarter century and several other seminal Dylan records later, “Time Out of Mind” is still viewed as a masterpiece, just a mid-career one.
“Fragments — Time Out of Mind Sessions (19961997)” — the 17th volume of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, an archival release series — reveals even more layers to the record that reset the trajectory of Dylan’s career. It proves, yet again, that Dylan’s discards are as good or better than most people’s official catalogue.
The five-disc set is an amalgamation of previously unheard studio outtakes, a remixed version of the original record, live tracks and previously released alternate versions.
The remixed original record allows listeners to experience “Time Out of Mind” in a new way, stripping away Daniel Lanois’ swampy production to present the songs closer to how they were played in the studio. The live versions captured between 1998 and 2001 crackle, with Dylan’s touring band flexing its muscle.
But the release’s heart is the studio outtakes. It’s through these that we hear Dylan recrafting the songs, taking discarded bits from one and adding them to another, dropping and adding lyrics seemingly at whim.
A bonus treat: Dylan’s heartfelt rendering early in the recording sessions of the Scottish folk song “The Water is Wide.” Rather than a toss off, Dylan leans into it and
delivers a rendition that will raise the hairs on the back of your neck. — Scott Bauer, Associated Press
From the moment they held the iconic
glass microphone at Eurovision in 2021, the members of Italian rock band Maneskin have catapulted to worldwide fame. Their third album “Rush!” perfectly encapsulates the four-piece band’s essence and reveals insights into the life-changing chapter they’ve lived in the past couple of years.
While most of the 17 tracks are in English, Maneskin doesn’t forget where it came from by adding a few tracks in Italian, including the single “La Fine.” “Know that it’s not the beginning, it’s the end/ Even the most beautiful rose has thorns/ Maybe the only answer is to leave or to stay to rot,” the band members sing.
“Rush!” can’t merely be described as a rock album, even though the band keeps that fiery and loud beat. The members experiment with different genres such as indie rock and pop. But their growing popularity has not changed their revolutionary spirit.
In the track “Gossip,” featuring Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine, Maneskin frontman Damiano David sings: “This place is a circus. You just see the surface.”
The band members show their vulnerabilities, their anger and their joys, and they take jabs at the American dream that does not really represent them.
Maneskin’s impact on the music industry looks to be long-lasting and anything but rushed.
On Whitehorse’s “I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying,”
the singer-songwriterhusband-wife duo Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland trade the lead and share their love of classic country music.
Twang has always been part of the Canadian pair’s repertoire, and while writing during the pandemic, the couple looked to the country sounds of a halfcentury ago for inspiration. The result is a collection of tunes that are by turns weepy, funny, hooky, bouncy and lovely, echoing 1970s Bakersfield, Los Angeles, Austin and Nashville. Along with drinking, the coronavirus lockdown is a recurring topic, and the two also sing about gambling on love, the tug of home and toilet paper.
The arrangements are spare, wisely leaving the focus on the beautifully complementary vocals. The harmonies of McClelland and Doucet, both fine lead singers, can be savory or sweet. The voices weave around Burke Carroll’s pedal steel and Doucet’s distinctive electric guitar work. On “I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying,” retro becomes modern.