There’s something to be said for sitting down with a new album you haven’t heard and listening to it without prejudice, but all hope for that seems to be lost — more than 5 weeks before its release — when it comes to Bob Dylan’s Modern Times. I must admit I found Seth Rogovoy’s impressions (he was one of a small number of critics allowed to hear the album play once through recently in New York) today quite interesting and tantalizing. For instance:

Suffice it to say that when the album ended, the handful of us gathered in the room to hear the new album were stunned into silence by the impact and import of this work shot through with familiar but heightened apocalyptic imagery.

There are very specific references to the events of 9/11 on this album; there are poetic references to prophecy; there is much talk of religion and the moral (or immoral) state of humankind; blindness haunts the album and in some ways functions as the connecting thread, a running motif; and more than perhaps ever before, there are references to violence, vengeance, and murder, including many phrased in the first person.

I’m curious at to whether those references to 9/11 were in fact really specific, or just whether Dylan is using images that echo them very closely. (Of-course, some heard images that echoed that day on his previous album, which was released on that day.)

Rogovoy also comments on the overall feel (a mix of styles similar to those on “L & T”; more “live” sounding), and the relatively long length of some of the songs. A song Dylan wrote and released in the meantime (‘Cross The Green Mountain from the 2003 soundtrack to the film “Gods and Generals”) was also quite long, at 8 minutes or so. And funnily enough, you can hear 9/11 references in that too, without stretching all that much — though as to them being intentional, that’s another matter.

The track list for Modern Times has been out for a while, but, for the record, here it is as it’s appearing in various outlets, with the length of each track too:

1. Thunder on the Mountain - 5:55
2. Spirit on the Water - 7:42
3. Rollin’ and Tumblin’ - 6:01
4. When the Deal Goes Down - 5:04
5. Someday Baby - 4:55
6. Workingman’s Blues #2 - 6:07
7. Beyond the Horizon - 5:36
8. Nettie Moore - 6:52
9. The Levee’s Gonna Break - 5:43
10. Ain’t Talkin’ - 8:48

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