This review by Scott Mervis - abridged here - was originally published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on April 30, 2009. (Third in a series of three reviews.)
BOB DYLAN 'Together Through Life' (Columbia)
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 4 (Very good)
David Fricke, writing one of the first reviews of Together Through Life, described Dylan's voice as "a deep, exhausted rasp that sounds like the singer has been beaten to a pulp, then left for dead at the side of the road."
Dylan's voice has never been considered a pretty thing, but it's taken a lot of mileage, whiskey and cigarettes for it to reach the "left for dead..." stage. Some folks like American Idols with clear, pitch-perfect voices. Some like more grit. And then some like their singers sounding just slightly beyond half-dead. (Dylan's is) certainly the voice you want to sing a line like, "The sun is sinking low/I guess it's time to go/I feel a chilly breeze/in place of memories" from Life is Hard.
Dylan's third (studio album of) this decade... is another roll and tumble through old time Willie Dixon-style blues, this time with co-writing credits for Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. Dylan's minstrels - including Heartbreaker guitarist Mike Campbell and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos on accordion - give the record an otherworldly barroom swagger. They open it up sounding like Satan's cabaret band on Beyond Here Lies Nothin', the singer at his most menacing as he bellows, "just as long as you stay with me/the whole world is my throne/beyond here lies nothing/nothing we can call our own."
Together Through Life has the touches of gloom and doom we've come to expect from the old troubadour - Life is Hard is a ponderously slow after-hours shuffle and Forgetful Heart is a lover's dirge - but as he growls on Shake Shake Mama, "come back here, we can have some real fun." And Dylan does. More than (on) the last record, you can picture (a) young Dylan taking on these songs.
You have to go back to Desire to find a Dylan ballad with the smoky Latin flavor of This Dream of You. I Feel A Change Comin' On bounces like Dylan and the Band on Planet Waves, and Jolene and Shake Shake Mama are playful, lusty blues romps that rollick down Highway 61.
The crowning gem is the finale of It's All Good, where, as Hidalgo wraps his accordion around the guitar, Dylan takes a piece of slang and twists it around in a piece of apocalyptic blues: "Coldblooded killer stalkin' the town/Cop cars blinkin', something bad going down/Buildings are crumbling in the neighborhood/but there's nothing to worry about, cause it's all good."
Moral of the story: Even a Dylan left for dead at the side of the road has plenty of life in him.
Image: Amazon.
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