Time Out of Mind

The good songs are sad wallows in the darkness of death and heartache with an immersive atmosphere and a slow burning intensity. The bad songs are disposable blues tracks with a more upbeat feel but pretty boring - necessary pallette cleansers for contrast maybe, but there're too many of them and they're all overlong. The whole thing is a classic case of CD-era bloat - the 45 minute LP cut of this would be great. The soaring lap steels, delicate clean guitar leads, gentle organs, and moody pianos and the huge reverby production all give the slow songs such a sombre reflexive feel - a heavenly sound for a morbid mood.

There is something comforting about this album. The instruments all play their part very well, usually taking a backseat to Bob Dylan's vocals. Too bad the vocals are mostly bad. Make You Feel My Love is really good and I think it works with his vocals unlike a lot of other songs in this album. I get the importance of it though. He's still making great music a few decades into the business. This is the first of his album's I've heard, so I'm not a big fan, so I can't appreciate this album for that yet. I would like to revisit this album after hearing his other stuff, but for now, this is where I'm at.

Ugh how many fucking Bob Dylan records are on this list? This is 5 for me and I'm not even to 500 records yet.
This album actually starts off pretty strong, I like Love Sick a lot. Not your typical Bob Dylan which is a big check in the pro box for me. I like it because he's older and his voice is gravelly and that fits this song well. Certainly because there's no damn harmonica (yet...).
Yeah after the first song it falls off a cliff. It's back to normal Bob Dylan although mercifully without harmonica. Yeah I'm just not a fan. After the first song the album just drags on and on. Sorry, Bob. I get that you're a legend in your own time but I just don't agree. Please no more Bob Dylan for me. 2/5

Bob Dylan is a really boring blues singer

Meh. Not his best, although good lyrics.

I’ve never really listened to much more recent (and i recognise the irony of saying that about an album released nearly 30 years ago!).

My issue with this album is that the music is just too polished and therefore it doesn’t feel different enough from everything else out there. The songwriting is still great and Dylan’s distinctive vocals give them some depth but as a whole it just feels a bit flat for me.
That said i really enjoyed ‘til i fell in love with you’, ‘not dark yet’, ‘cold irons boun’ (which has a great boogie backing) and ‘make you feel my love’. I do however much prefer Adele’s take on the latter.

135 albums generated so far, this is the fifth Bob Dylan. That's a Dylan album every 27 days. For someone who has so far given every Dylan album a 2/5, that's too much Dylan.

The first song sounds like Nick Cave so that was slightly confusing. His voice sounds pretty different on this (much later) album and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I think I like his voice more (I couldn't really like it less), but I like his songwriting less throughout most of this record. It's frequently just very plodding.

By the time Cold Irons Bound hit, I realised that the parts of this album I was enjoying the most, were the bits that reminded me of Nick Cave. And them he butchered his own song (I don't even particularly like Adele, but her cover of Make You Feel My Love is so much better).

This possible scrapes a 2.5 but it's not enjoyable enough for a 3/5 so it's another

2/5

Bob Dylan should not be allowed to perform his own songs. He's a great songwriter, but such a horrible singer that it practically nullifies it.

This album is mostly songs that aren't particularly special. Just sort of meh. The only exception is "Make You Feel My Love." That one's a real star.

It's clearly a high quality example of something I wouldn't ever actively reach for, and at 72 minutes, staying the course was a bit of a test, but there is a palpable tension and dark atmosphere flowing throughout this. One of my first points of reference was the earlier works of Tom Waits before he (presumably) underwent a frontal lobotomy. There is some lovely instrumentation here, and Bob Dylan captures quite the presence with his raspy, nicotine-ravaged voice. Perhaps a good one for a gloomy winter evening with some mulled wine.

Interesting nicely produced take on the blues by Bob Dylan. His voice is an acquired taste that I have yet to acquire. It's odd, though. I appreciate the weirdness of it. SO MANY other people doing a BAD job of expressing themselves this way (looking at you Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, and Tom Waits) and it always comes off insincere. Dylan somehow makes every word believable. So even though not my taste, I get what he's trying to do. Highlands is amazing, and a couple other cuts were great. Love the instrumentation and the production.

It was only yesterday that I had The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and today I get The Grapplin' With His Mortality Bob Dylan. That might have worked in Time Out of Mind’s favour - hearing how much his voice has aged made it more poignant. And he still managed to knock out another standard with Make You Feel My Love. It makes you glad that the grizzled, contrary old git cheated death and went on to tour for another 28 years and counting.

Better than most of the early "classics" that people are astonished I don't like. I dig the heavy use of the blues here, especially when the the keys are featured. Overall it feels lazy though. Blues riffs are very basic and sterile. The songs all blend together into background music aside from a few. Still nothing I'm likely to ever listen to again.

Strong album from Dylan, apparently reviving his career in the late 90s. Most of the time I even liked his singing (unlike a lot of songs where he sounds like a parody of himself). A few exceptions - drop the twang in Tryin' to Get to Heaven, Bob (fun fact - David Bowie recorded a nice version of this song, released posthumously - listening to Bowie growling "Tryin' to get to heaven, before they close the door" is much more powerful than Dylan's twang). A lot of the album is basic blues, but he takes it to the next level through his lyrics and, yes, even his singing. The band is top notch and Daniel Lanois' production is outstanding. Every article I read says that Dylan didn't feel comfortable with the production style and self-produced from then on out. I wonder what happened behind the scenes. Maybe it's as simple as Dylan prefers to be his own boss. No idea. Probably the biggest disappointment is the most covered song on the album: Make You Feel My Love (made huge by Adele - and according to secondhandsongs.com it's his most covered song, period). It ends up being another one of those "Dylan wrote it but others did it better" songs. He doesn't even sound as good on this song compared to other tracks on the album, yet his singing on a lot of other tracks suggests it could have been great on its own (compare to a song like Most of the Time from 1989 - another powerful emotional song, but Dylan sounds great on it). There's just no explaining why sometimes Dylan sounds good versus bad. Finally, Highlands is stupid long, but at least it's a good vibe. I would definitely revisit this album. Favorite tracks: Love Sick, Standing in the Doorway (great vibe, poignant lyrics), Million Miles (a great example of how he makes a basic blues track sound amazing), Not Dark Yet (very powerful, beautiful track), Cold Irons Bound (catchy groove).

Fucking hell, did dylan actually make a not god awful album? What the hell? I am bewildered. There were songs here that didnt sound like a cat scratching on a chalkboard. Dont get me wrong, there were several songs that annoyed the shit outta me but damn, i actually didnt hate this album at times

Relatively unfamiliar with Dylan's stuff (besides the most popular songs) before this project, and the more I get it, the more I enjoy it. I know this is different than the earlier works, but the bluesy feel is right up my alley.

This is certainly a Bob Dylan album.

Definitely his best so far

Was... was his voice always that gravelly? Like, I know he was rough, but this sounds like a racoon being dragged through a quarry filled with fiberglass leavings. Still good though.

I don't know how the rest of this album is going to play out, but the first 45 seconds of song 1 has done my head in. Is this Bob Dylan...with vocal reverb? It's not quite auto-tune, but there's something being done here to digitize his voice. That's bizarre.

OK, the first song was actually kind of the highlight of the album. Firstly, it's too long. I don't need an hour and a quarter of...whatever this is. Secondly, I'm not sure who this is for, other than existing Dylan fans. Did this album attract a bunch of new fans? I doubt it. It's not, like, actively awful, but it's kind of boring. It doesn't have the punchiness of Dylan's early work.

I just saw that this album won Album of the Year over OK Computer and I'm absolutely dumbfounded. That's highway robbery. I want to penalize this a star because I'm annoyed, but I just learned that my favorite Dylan song, It's Not Dark Yet, is on this album, so I'll stick to a very generous 3 stars.

There's some artists on here who have SO many albums represented, and that can feel like an absolute chore because you hear one, you've heard them all right? However, this album is further proof that that absolutely isn't the case with Bob Dylan. The preconceptions I brought into this album were proven wrong, and this feels like a real change of pace from what I've heard before.

I really like how slow and deliberate and soulful this is. It's got a great mood to it. Interesting, well written songs throughout. It's put together really well, and the musicality is absolutely on point. Great job BD!