Bob Dylan’s new album Together Through Lifeis in the stores and in my dirty little hands, and it’s at least as dynamite a record as this listener anticipated it would be. It’s also such a gift. Who’d have thought that in 2009 we’d be listening to a new Bob Dylan album like this? Not little ol’ me — not 20 years ago, and not 10 years ago.

I’m tempted to quote Bob’s memoir Chronicles and say, “The old him is back!” But it’s not an old Dylan come back wearing the same hat and singing the same tune. As with his best albums, Together Through Life has an organic nature and voice all its own. But where it brings to mind the “old him” is in the way in which the album was recorded, and how it feels. There’s a spontaneity and dynamism to each performance that used to be a Dylan trademark, but in some ways was set aside on the last two studio albums. As much as I love particular songs and performances on those albums, I rarely would think to listen to either one at a sitting. Together Through Life, on the other hand, is very much one of those great Dylan albums that creates a whole universe unto itself, into which you can immerse yourself completely. Like Blood On The Tracks, Desire, Blonde On Blonde, Infidels, Street-Legal; in truth, most Dylan albums are like that — just not the ones that the 21st century had given us to date. This one flows from the first note to the last. It’s the same guy singing all the way through, even if the stories change. None of the performances make you feel like you’ve left one venue and entered another. And at 45 minutes, you don’t have to pack a lunch to listen all the way through either. In plain language: I love it.

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I’ll be saying more about it, but I’ll sign off for now with a link to Ann Powers’ short review on the LA Times website:

Bunyan’s 1679 “A Treatise of the Fear of God” may or may not be the inspiration for “Forgetful Heart,” the most ominous song on this mostly romping collection. Dylanologists, such as the historian Sean Wilentz, have noted that “the fourth part of the day” that Dylan gently intones about in “I Feel a Change Coming On” refers to an Old Testament passage (Nehemiah 9:3, for the curious) about penitence and paying Heaven its due.

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With such titles as “Shake Shake Mama” and “It’s All Good,” some feel a little hackneyed at first. Repeated listening peels off the layers, but Dylan’s singing, especially frog-ified to pay tribute to the “raw” in early rock, reminds us to not get too serious. “It’s all good,” Dylan says while documenting the apocalypse in the roadhouse stomp that closes the album.

Take this old bluesman any way you want to, baby, and be glad he’s still here.

It’s not clear if Powers was put in mind of that “Treatise of the Fear of God” by Bunyan on her own steam or saw someone else reference it. It’s not something I was familiar with, but the text of it is online, and a relevant portion may be this one:

Wouldest thou grow in this grace of fear? then take heed of A FORGETFUL HEART. Such a heart is not a heart where the grace of fear will flourish, “when I remember, I am afraid,” &c. Therefore take heed of forgetfulness; do not forget but remember God, and his kindness, patience, and mercy, to those that yet neither have grace, nor special favour from him, and that will beget and nourish his fear in thy heart, but forgetfulness of this, or of any other of his judgments, is a great wound and weakening to this fear (Job 21:6). When a man well remembers that God’s judgments are so great a deep and mystery, as indeed they are, that remembrance puts a man upon such considerations of God and of his judgments as to make him fear — “Therefore,” said Job, “I am afraid of him.” See the place, Job 23:15. “Therefore am I troubled at his presence; when I consider, I am afraid of him” — when I remember and consider of the wonderful depths of his judgments towards man.

I don’t know how much basis there is to think Dylan was directly inspired by Bunyan’s work. However, in considering such themes under the surface of these songs, I think we’d definitely be on exactly the right track.

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