Time Out of Mind

Hootin n hollerin

Not sure how quick I will be to listen to this again, not that it’s boring I’m just not sure I get Bob Dylan.

Didn’t realise “Make you feel my love” was originally a Dylan song and I did enjoy that, and “Standing in the doorway”.

3

OK, so a bluesier Dylan album. I can definitely see where people get the "Bob Dylan sucks at singing" from with this album, but again, he's always sounded like an 80 year old singing, only this time he was older when this album was made (55ish), so it still makes sense.

But yeah, bluesier stuff I'm burnt out on unless it's more alternative (See: The White Stripes). So I'm not super enamored with this one. But it's still solid.

It’s odd that this album seems to be influenced by people like Tom Waits and Nick Cave, who were themselves almost certainly influenced by Dylan. I like the darker, moody ballads here, but less so the noisy blues stompers.

Dylan's version of paint-by-numbers. Perfectly okay, but a far cry from his classic material.

Later-era Dylan eh? He hasn't quite become completely unintelligible yet, but the signs of the "old man grunts tonelessly into microphone for 2 hours" are certainly there.

I'll stick with the early stuff thanks.

What’s this, a Bob Dylan album that doesn’t feature harmonica and is actually decent? I didn’t think this existed. 4/5

A weak comeback album from Bob. The songs were all about 2× longer than they needed to be, the content was pretty homogeneous, and really there were no standout moments. Sometimes more or less pleasant, but not enought to average up. 2.4/5 -> 2/5

"Make You Feel My Love" doesn't work with Dylan's 1997 voice. This was hailed as a return to form for Dylan, but I didn't find it nearly as interesting as his earlier stuff.

I like this more electric, bluesy side of Dylan. A groovy album, if a bit long.

Bob really has to include at least one cheesy folk-blues song 😭.

This to me is very much a sunrise/sundown record. The last track reminds me of Desolation Row based on its length (2.5-3)

Sigh.

Wilco is on this list aren't they.

Enjoyed this one more than I expected for a late career Dylan album. First time around I didn't think much of it, but second time I listened in the car at dusk, and it went down very nicely

I didn't dislike this as much as the terrible live recording, but I didn't like a ton about this one, either. Older Dylan is better.

That version of make you feel my love is genuinely terrible. Rest is cool. Grammy still feels more like a lifetime achievement award.

I’m at a 5. Hell, I’m actually probably higher. Hell froze over a while ago; this is a full tundra at this point.

When we got Tom Waits’ “Swordfishtrombones” in March of this year, I wrote down that “some of the lyrics on the tracks feel like a sort of contemporary, mildly buzzed Bob Dylan for the 1980s”. Bob Dylan, on this album, feels like the 1980s Tom Waits of the 1990s, which is basically to say that… well, he sounds a lot like Tom Waits here, telling some stories in the same little dirty dive bar that a group member imagined when they reviewed “Swordfishtrombones”. That imagery permeated into my head throughout the album, and I think it really makes the whole thing click that much more.

For 1997, this is no longer the voice of a generation writing protest songs, asking people how they feel, or writing endless amounts of vaguely confusing purple prose that felt like a novel to decipher. This is, surprisingly, the most straightforward Bob Dylan album we’ve gotten so far, helped by the fact that a lot of these are just tracks about being an older, heartbroken man sort of lamenting his mortality, his shattered relationships, the futile chase to retain them & the feelings of lost time that come with it. It’s an extremely grounded album, enhanced by Bob Dylan’s more gravely 56-year-old voice. Yes, it’s still kinda goofy, but he’s aged into a sort of old gunslinger of an artist who’s allowed to express these regrets in a way that feels very genuine. In a weird way, this is the most control I’ve heard Bob Dylan have in his voice, which is more than passable on a majority of these tracks. I hesitate to say he finally became a good singer, especially given what Adele did for “Make You Feel My Love” a decade later, but there are moments here where Bob Dylan really does sound confidently strong, and it gives the tracks an added sense of conviction.

Daniel Lanois’ production work is what truly, fully makes this album work. Bob Dylan provides a great foundation, but the moodier tones of the backing band, as well as the slight filtering on Dylan’s vocals throughout the album, add the contemporary touch that’s desperately needed to make this album feel like it’s from 1997 as opposed to 1967. In the same way that “Tanto Tempo” subtly infused its extra instrumentation into a bossa nova base, Daniel Lanois adds just the right amount of light grunge / trip-hop elements into Dylan’s style, where it adds to each track in a way that captures the same emotion & conviction that Bob Dylan put into writing & singing each of these tracks. It also helps that there’s a decent variety of genres explored here, perhaps most surprisingly the reggae / blues-inspired energy of “Can’t Wait”.

If there’s any one singular all-timer highlight here, it’s “Not Dark Yet”, which is one of the best-written tracks I’ve heard from any artist, ever. The sunset-driven imagery, building with past regrets & eventually culminating in this character on his death bed, felt like a man preparing for a funeral, in a way that reminded me deeply of “You Want It Darker”, with the instrumentation growing more intense in a way that felt reminiscent of Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt”. Granted, Bob Dylan is still alive, 28 years later, so that same emotional impact of his actual death is not there yet (and I hope it’s not there for a while longer), but the fact that the track feels so viscerally indicative of death is impressive all the same.

If there’s a lowlight here, well… yeah, it’s “Highlands”, but only because it’s 16 minutes. I actually didn’t mind it at all though; when I was listening, my brain went back to the old dive bar imagery that permeates the album – the stream of consciousness style, while sort of undermined by the repetition in the instrumental, slowly started to come around to work for me. In a way, I’m vaguely reminded of Weird Al’s “Trapped in the Drive-Thru”, where a lot of the dialogue is sort of uselessly conversational, and yet vaguely compelling, for seemingly no reason. (I refuse to give R. Kelly any credit.) Yeah, there’s a whole aside about some waitress in Boston that Bob Dylan barely indulged in drawing a picture of, but it serves to sell the bigger point of the track: Bob Dylan just wants to be a fucking hermit, but he’s in too deep at this point as an artist, and he just has to settle for mentally living in the highlands. Could’ve gotten to the point way faster than 16 minutes, but again, the dive bar imagery in my head made the track work more fruitfully.

Overall, it’s a remarkably strong album, and one that I wouldn’t possibly have expected from Bob Dylan, especially 3 decades after his most relevant period. He basically disappeared for the vast majority of the 1990s, only to come out with something that still holds up really well 28 years later. The writing is on point, his vocals have finally caught up, the production meshes perfectly, and I think the slight Tony Bennett-esque career renaissance that emerged from it was probably well deserved. Granted, I’m not sure if it’s “win the Grammy for Album of the Year over OK Computer” levels of deserved, but I’m surprised at the fact that it’s even slightly justifiable in my head. This is a damn good one, and I think it’s the best Bob Dylan album we’ve gotten, and probably the best one we’ll get. We have 3 more of these damn things to go, all from the 1960s. I can only hope at least one of them matches the quality of this one (and hopefully, that’s “Blonde On Blonde”) – to my ears, this is a 5, if not a little higher. It’s that good. Hell of a job, Bob.

Good one

Actually, I don't like Bob Dylan. I've explicitly blocked him on my streaming service. I don't like his voice. I can't really get into his music, and all the hype surrounding him gets on my nerves. But this album wasn't so bad. Maybe I'll even give it another listen. 3/5

The Good: Dylan…
The Bad: Not 60-70s Dylan
The Ugly: Not understanding the title… time out, out of mind, time? Why not just all it Bob Cooder…

I see plenty of comments about putting on this album while sipping a glass of hootch, late at night, when there’s nothing else left to say…

Could be correct…

Yet, it’s not midnight, and I am not ready for a glass of hootch…
Should I give this album 4* so that I can remind myself to play it at some point in the future?

Do geese see god?

Bob Dylan's 30th album is kinda like... jazz with vocals. It's okay. No hooks on a first listen. It's weird that 'Make You Feel My Love' was written by Dylan but Billy Joel's version came out 1 month before this one. I guess that's just the wacky kinda stuff you expect from Bob!