Black Dylan

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The other side of Bob Dylan referred to in the title is presumably his romantic, absurdist, and whimsical one – anything that wasn't featured on the staunchly folky, protest-heavy Times They Are a-Changin', really. Because of this, Another Side of Bob Dylan is a more varied record and it's more successful, too, since it captures Dylan expanding his music, turning in imaginative, poetic performances on love songs and protest tunes alike. This has an equal number of classics to its predecessor, actually, with "All I Really Want to Do," "Chimes of Freedom," "My Back Pages," "I Don't' Believe You," and "It Ain't Me Babe" standing among his standards, but the key to the record's success is the album tracks, which are graceful, poetic, and layered. Both the lyrics and music have gotten deeper and Dylan's trying more things – this, in its construction and attitude, is hardly strictly folk, as it encompasses far more than that. The result is one of his very best records, a lovely intimate affair.

On his first LP of original songs in nearly a decade—and his first since reluctantly accepting Nobel Prize honours in 2016—Bob Dylan takes a long look back. Rough and Rowdy Ways is a hot bath of American sound and historical memory, the 79-year-old singer-songwriter reflecting on where we’ve been, how we got here and how much time he has left. There are temperamental blues (“False Prophet”, “Crossing the Rubicon”) and gentle hymns (“I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You”), rollicking farewells (“Goodbye Jimmy Reed”) and heady exchanges with the Grim Reaper (“Black Rider”). It reads like memoir, but you know he’d claim it’s fiction.And yet, maybe it’s the timing—coming out in June 2020 amidst the throes of a pandemic and a social uprising that bears echoes of the 1960s—or his age, but Dylan’s every line here does have the added charge of what feels like a final word, like some ancient wisdom worth decoding and preserving before it’s too late.

The other side of Bob Dylan referred to in the title is presumably his romantic, absurdist, and whimsical one – anything that wasn't featured on the staunchly folky, protest-heavy Times They Are a-Changin', really. Because of this, Another Side of Bob Dylan is a more varied record and it's more successful, too, since it captures Dylan expanding his music, turning in imaginative, poetic performances on love songs and protest tunes alike…

If Blood on the Tracks was an unapologetically intimate affair, Desire is unwieldy and messy, the deliberate work of a collective. And while Bob Dylan directly addresses his crumbling relationship with his wife, Sara, on the final track, Desire is hardly as personal as its predecessor, finding Dylan returning to topical songwriting and folk tales for the core of the record…

Oh Mercy was hailed as a comeback, not just because it had songs noticeably more meaningful than anything Bob Dylan had recently released, but because Daniel Lanois' production gave it cohesion. There was cohesion on Empire Burlesque, of course, but that cohesion was a little too slick, a little too commercial, whereas this record was filled with atmospheric, hazy production – a sound as arty as most assumed the songs to be…

Bob Dylan released the dark, unruly Time Out of Mind in 1997 following two albums of folk and blues covers. It was his first original material in a decade and summed up his 20th century. Rough and Rowdy Ways is his first new material since 2012's Tempest and arrives during a global pandemic and the righteous struggle for racial and economic justice. These ten songs revel in forms that have been Dylan's métier since the '60s: blues, country, folk, rockabilly, gospel, etc. Its three pre-release singles – "Murder Most Foul," "I Contain Multitudes," and "False Prophet" – are showcases for a songwriter who speaks directly yet remains elusive.