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Rating:
Elvis Costello said: "this is the greatest album Dylan has ever composed".
Debatable perhaps. We are, however, absolutely certain, after having listened carefully to this record, that we have in our hands an album of extraordinary craftsmanship. Certainly, it doesn’t possess the political harangues of the Dylan minstrel of the early sixties nor that lysergic, psychedelic, neurotic, and feverish aura of "Highway 61 Revisited" or "Blonde on Blonde", but "Time Out Of Mind" encapsulates within itself the soul and ideals of an artist who has reached a crucial point in his "pilgrimage": the sunset of expectations and life.
A career that seems an eternity. From the first high school recordings made with primitive means back in ‘58, Dylan arrived in ‘97 with a record that brilliantly encapsulates his immense, boundless experience as a songwriter and poet. It must be said that during these long years, he understandably experienced some artistically dark periods. The mid-eighties crisis seemed to decree the death of the Duluth minstrel; the specialized press unanimously declared him finished. Moreover, that immense weight that weighed on him, that of having been the one who in the ‘60s and ‘70s produced a dozen albums unanimously considered among the greatest masterpieces of popular art of the last century, would have flattened even the most resilient and tenacious artist. Instead, step by step, he was reborn like a phoenix from his own ashes and... here we are to comment on a completely resurrected artist. "Time Out Of Mind" marked the return of Mr. Zimmerman to the levels of yesteryear. It’s vintage blues that resonates in this album.
Dylan is dejected, disillusioned, and bitter in his cold and disarming reflections.
Engaging and warm in its sound, the album is unhinged by sharp judgments of disarming melancholy and pessimism. Starting with the dark and heartfelt blues of "Love Sick", dragging itself with a weary stride, passing through the gritty R&B of "Dirt Road Blues", which seems to have emerged from the best of Johnson or Lee Hooker, and still through the poignant notes of one of Dylan’s most intense and mature masterpieces: "Standing in the Doorway", seven minutes of true emotion, embellished with one of the most tender melodies of his entire repertoire, you can almost completely grasp the intrinsic value of the product. But, of course, that’s not all. The album features one of those songs that undoubtedly strike and leave a lasting mark: "Not Dark Yet". The emotion in listening to this piece is beyond words. It strikes in an extraordinary, if not astonishing way, with the crystalline and intact inspiration of Our Man, totally unexpected from an artist said to be worn out by many, leading us to make daring comparisons, far back in time. From my humble point of view, "Not Dark Yet" still perfectly preserves the magic of the most mystical, deep, and introspective Dylan. To be clear, the Dylan of "Simple Twist of Fate", "Shelter From The Storm", "Tangled Up in Blue", but even of "Visions Of Johanna" and "Desolation Row. The "wild mercury sound" of the feverish, lysergic years of youth is no more, but a deep, mature, knowledgeable, and wise sound, from someone who has seen the swift and relentless flow of hope and life escape. The soft, slow, and enveloping blues, enriched by ethereal and weeping guitars, forms a backdrop to a voice authentically suffered, emotional, inspired, and steeped in boundless melancholy. A disturbing, unstoppable, and also liberating stream of consciousness that, with its final guitar solo, lifts our soul to latitudes hitherto unknown and unexplored. "Not Dark Yet" is an "infinite" song, that resuscitates with every new listening, that never ceases to amaze and excite, soaring each time into new spiritual flights. It is truly impossible to try to set barriers to the infinite emotion that this piece manages to make us live.
The mystical magic of this "song" is masterfully picked up at the end of the album, in the splendid "Highlands". Another unstoppable stream of consciousness over sixteen intense minutes long. An ending that has been missing since the times of "Desolation Row" or "Sad Eyes Lady Of The Lowlands".
Within this album seeped in unspeakable and mystical moods, there is space also for little hidden gems: the delightful "Make You Feel My Love", for example, which takes us back to the sweet melodies of "It’s All Over Now Baby Blue" or "It Ain’t Me Babe", or the bluesy and harsh "Cold Irons Bound", or again the melancholic, almost poignant, "Tryin’ To Get To Heaven".
And thus we can well say that Dylan still manages to play the part of the drunken street musician, the head of the ramshackle circus with the fiery red curtains, the clown, the gambler: with the band of fellows who have followed him on tour for ages, he drags himself, like his song, through the sound streets of New Orleans, up and down the Mississippi and the freight trains of the Midwest, but above all up and down his personal ghosts.
One of Dylan’s greatest albums, perhaps the deepest and most mature.
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
04 Million Miles (05:52)
You took a part of me that I really miss
I keep asking myself how long it can go on like this
You told yourself a lie; that's all right mama, I told myself one too
I'm trying to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you
You took the silver, you took the gold
You left me standing out in the cold
People ask about you; I didn't tell them everything I knew
Well I'm trying to get closer, but I'm still a million miles from you
I'm drifting in and out of dreamless sleep
Throwing all my memories in a ditch so deep
Did so many things I never did intend to do
Well I'm trying to get closer, but I'm still a million miles from you
I need your love so bad, turn your lamp down low
I need every bit of it for the places that I go
Sometimes I wonder just what it's all coming to
Well I'm tryin' to get closer, but I'm still a million miles from you
Well I don't dare close my eyes and I don't dare wink
Maybe in the next life I'll be able to hear myself think
Feel like talking to somebody but I just don't know who
Well, I'm tryin' to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you
The last thing you said before you hit the street
"Gonna find me a janitor to sweep me off my feet"
I said, "That's all right mama.... you..... you do what you gotta do"
Well, I'm tryin' to get closer; I'm still a million miles from you
Rock me, pretty baby, rock me 'til everything gets real
Rock me for a little while, rock me 'til there's nothing left to feel
And I'll rock you too
I'm tryin' to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you
Well, there's voices in the night trying to be heard
I'm sitting here listening to every mind polluting word
I know plenty of people who would put me up for a day or two
Yes, I'm tryin' to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you
11 Highlands (16:31)
Well my heart's in the Highlands gentle and fair
Honeysuckle blooming in the wildwood air
Bluebelles blazing, where the Aberdeen waters flow
Well my heart's in the Highland,
I'm gonna go there when I feel good enough to go
Windows were shakin' all night in my dreams
Everything was exactly the way that it seems
Woke up this morning and I looked at the same old page
Same ol' rat race
Life in the same ol' cage.
I don't want nothing from anyone, ain't that much to take
Wouldn't know the difference between a real blonde and a fake
Feel like a prisoner in a world of mystery
I wish someone would come
And push back the clock for me
Well my heart's in the Highlands wherever I roam
That's where I'll be when I get called home
The wind, it whispers to the buckeyed trees in rhyme
Well my heart's in the Highland,
I can only get there one step at a time.
I'm listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound
Someone's always yelling turn it down
Feel like I'm drifting
Drifting from scene the scene
I'm wondering what in the devil could it all possibly mean?
Insanity is smashing up against my soul
You can say I was on anything but a roll
If I had a conscience, well I just might blow my top
What would I do with it anyway
Maybe take it to the pawn shop
My heart's in the Highlands at the break of dawn
By the beautiful lake of the Black Swan
Big white clouds, like chariots that swing down low
Well my heart's in the Highlands
Only place left to go
I'm in Boston town, in some restaurant
I got no idea what I want
Well, maybe I do but I'm just really not sure
Waitress comes over
Nobody in the place but me and her
It must be a holiday, there's nobody around
She studies me closely as I sit down
She got a pretty face and long white shiny legs
She says, "What'll it be?"
I say, "I don't know, you got any soft boiled eggs?"
She looks at me, Says "I'd bring you some
but we're out of 'm, you picked the wrong time to come"
Then she says, "I know you're an artist, draw a picture of me!"
I say, "I would if I could, but,
I don't do sketches from memory."
"Well", she says, "I'm right here in front of you, or haven't you looked?"
I say," all right, I know, but I don't have my drawing book!"
She gives me a napkin, she says, "you can do it on that"
I say, "yes I could but,
I don't know where my pencil is at!"
She pulls one out from behind her ear
She says "all right now, go ahead, draw me, I'm standing right here"
I make a few lines, and I show it for her to see
Well she takes a napkin and throws it back
And says "that don't look a thing like me!"
I said, "Oh, kind miss, it most certainly does"
She says, "you must be jokin.'" I say, "I wish I was!"
Then she says, "you don't read women authors, do you?"
Least that's what I think I hear her say,
"Well", I say, "how would you know and what would it matter anyway?"
"Well", she says, "you just don't seem like you do!"
I said, "you're way wrong."
She says, "which ones have you read then?" I say, "I read Erica Jong!"
She goes away for a minute and I slide up out of my chair
I step outside back to the busy street, but nobody's going anywhere
Well my heart's in the Highlands, with the horses and hounds
Way up in the border country, far from the towns
With the twang of the arrow and a snap of the bow
My heart's in the Highlands
Can't see any other way to go
Every day is the same thing out the door
Feel further away then ever before
Some things in life, it gets too late to learn
Well, I'm lost somewhere
I must have made a few bad turns
I see people in the park forgetting their troubles and woes
They're drinking and dancing, wearing bright colored clothes
All the young men with their young women looking so good
Well, I'd trade places with any of them
In a minute, if I could
I'm crossing the street to get away from a mangy dog
Talking to myself in a monologue
I think what I need might be a full length leather coat
Somebody just asked me
If I registered to vote
The sun is beginning to shine on me
But it's not like the sun that used to be
The party's over, and there's less and less to say
I got new eyes
Everything looks far away
Well, my heart's in the Highlands at the break of day
Over the hills and far away
There's a way to get there, and I'll figure it out somehow
But I'm already there in my mind
And that's good enough for now
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Other reviews
By ahivelasquez1975
"Dylan’s voice in the opening track, Love Sick, sounds as if it comes from another world."
"Not Dark Yet is one of the most beautiful songs in the entire Dylan repertoire and... the greatest song ever written about the decline of man."
