Bob Dylan: Together Through Life (Columbia)
Dylan is now getting by on style, charm, and wit. There's not a song on this ten-track album that will enter the pantheon, but while it's playing it's thoroughly enjoyable. Partly, as always, that's because the man has a way with words. So does his co-writer (on all but one track) this time out, Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. Little gems such as "beyond here lies nothin' but the mountains of the past" peek out wryly from the cracks in the music. And yeah, there are a lot of cracks in Dylan's voice as well, but that just means that when he delivers a sincere line ("life is hard without you near me"), he not only sounds like he means it, he sounds like he's earned the right to deliver such raw, unfiltered sentiments without ornamentation. Since Dylan first appeared a half-century ago, he's been known to more or less say that he just wanted to have the career of some old broken-down blues singer. Here, on an album full of ready-mades and shuffles -- he even has to co-credit Willie Dixon for "My Wife's Home Town" -- it sounds like he meant it. But he can pull it off: his dry chuckle near the end of that track is perfect. Dylan produced this disc himself, and Los Lobos' David Hidalgo colors many tracks with his accordion, while others include slide or pedal steel guitar, lending a distinctive tone to the album that makes the rudimentary music sound characterful. This is a good-time party album that suggests that the singer's good times are all found in reminiscence and the graceful acceptance, finally, of painful self-knowledge long held at arm's length but now embraced for the relief of relaxation it allows ("it's been so long / now you're content to let the days go by"). It's not an album that makes a bold impression, that reaches out and grabs the listener. It can blur together into something that could be mistaken for blandness unless one willingly accepts it on its own terms by devoting attention to its subtleties. It's an effort fully repaid.