Bob Dylan
Time Out Of Mind
1997

genre: folk-rock, blues-rock
1. Love Sick - 5:21
2. Dirt Road Blues - 3:36
3. Standing In the Doorway - 7:43
4. Million Miles - 5:52
5. Tryin' To Get To Heaven - 5:21
6. 'til I Fell In Love With You - 5:17
7. Not Dark Yet - 6:29
8. Cold Irons Bound - 7:15
9. Make You Feel My Love - 3:32
10. Can't Wait - 5:47
11. Highlands - 16:31

Passé as may be to think so, I'm not ashamed in the slightest to call Bob Dylan here one of my absolute favourite artists of all time. Two or three years ago, I'd sooner start eating peanut butter on toast again than get caught saying that. Back in the day I used to think this man was just about the most overrated artist in rock music history, rambling as he often did in the few songs of his I knew by name with a voice that sounded like a vacuum cleaner. In other words, it's quite strange that I like Dylan enough to call him one of my favourites, especially considering there are still areas of his discography that bore me a little. It was only early on this year as well that I started to properly explore it too and deciding that all that irritates me about him is how hard it is to find any of his material on youtube without stumbling through dozens of god-awful, misleadingly-titled covers by random hacks on the internet (even the videos I found below need to be double-clicked if you wanna watch them).

What happened? It's a not-too-interesting story I'm sure I've bored you all with somewhere here before, but among other things it was hearing this album - Dylan's big comeback of the '90s and first album of original material for some 7 years - that brought me round to the dark side. It was just a while after I wrote 1976's Desire into my album list of yesteryear that I first got hold of this and, oddly enough, I hated it. I think I only got through 3 or 4 of the songs before I decided this album was more overrated than New Labour was that very same year before ditching it in favour of something or other. Dylan's voice sounded really scratchy, aged and totally incapable of reeling me in, as did what first seemed to me like a sparse, lazy bunch of instrumental arrangements.

Somewhere along the line though, something clicked with me, and to say that this album unravelled would be quite the understatement. I'd taken a liking to a handful of other, older Dylan albums (such as Blood On the Tracks, Nashville Skyline and Street Legal and Infidels) before I could bring myself to listen to the opening bars of Love Sick again. 10-15 seconds in, the mood and feel of the album has a light shone on it for the first time, with Bobby D's opening lines of 'I'm walking through streets that are dead - walking with you in my head', backed up only by a sharp, staccato guitar riff before the gentle rhythm and ghostly electric piano kinda fade into the mix from the distance.

While the pace of the album may vary here and there, from faster footstompers like Dirt Road Blues to slower, more contemplative and lyric-centric numbers like Tryin' To Get To Heaven, overall you can get a handle of the feel of this marvelous album just by looking at the sleeve art above - put simply, as you listen to this it's very easy to imagine Dylan and his backing band playing this album to you in that same bleak, dimly-lit studio. Listening to this album on a long night in on your own is, then, quite an experience, as this album gives off a very ethereal, grim kinda vibe. As such, Time Out Of Mind here is quite possibly my favourite night-listening album.

It was as that dark, bleakly morbid and grainy atmosphere began to unravel in front of me that songs like the drumbeat-driven Tryin' To Get To Heaven began to hit home with me that much more, as it became obvious to me that this was an effortlessly awesome side of Bob Dylan's songwriting that was previously totally alien to me. The credit for this ghostly, despairing vibe, focusing on sharp, stop-start guitar riffs, ethereal organ flourishes and simplistic rhythms rests on the shoulders of not only Dylan himself but his co-producer for the album sessions, Daniel Lanois. They cultivate a sound that's something between folk, blues, garage and even country-rock absolutely superbly here, which creates a simply gorgeous ballad sound on numbers like the simply beautiful Not Dark Yet and Make You Feel My Love, and a racous, frenetic vibe on the harder-rocking Cold Irons Bound - another of my favourite Dylan songs.

Before I go on too long (as if I haven't already), this album presented me with a side Dylan's sound that I (and a lot of other similarly-casual listeners) quite simply never would've associated with him before. There is, after all, absolutely no acoustic guitar or harmonica to be heard, as a much darker and more image-rich sound is created. As I've probably said quite a few times already, it all seemed like lo-fi (well...ish), overlong drivel to me at first, but really came off as the wonderful, beautifully atmospheric album that it is after about 3 listens.

In a sentence, this is my favourite Dylan album, and Highlands is my favourite Dylan song.