Am I excited about the new Dylan album, Together Through Life, scheduled to come out April 28? You can bet your sweet bippy I am. I'm more excited than usual because of the involvement of David Hidalgo, accordion guru from Los Lobos. Their covers of "Billy" on the I'm Not There soundtrack and "On A Night Like This" on the Masked and Anonymous soundtrack blew away Dylan's originals, mostly because the instrumentation was so vibrant.
As of yesterday, Dylan's people have publicly previewed two of the album's tracks: "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" and "I Feel A Change Comin' On."
"Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" swings with gusto, but lyrically it is pretty weak. There are really only two stand-out lines: "boulevards of broken cars," which is interesting because it sets the listener up for the cliche of "broken dreams" and then throws in a surprise, and "beyond here lies nothin' but the mountains of the past." This last line comes from the penultimate chorus, which always begins with "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'," but then alternates the last line with each verse. This one, with the idea of a towering, insurmountable past, takes the cake.
Lyrically, "I Feel A Change Comin' On" is stronger. It opens up with the singer imagining watching his girl "walkin' with the village priest." A few verses later, he advises his girl that if she wants to "live easy, baby pack your clothes with mine." This has a strangely sweet and romantic quality to it the way Dylan puts it. (The line is actually stolen from an old Tommy Johnson blues lyric.) From the title, many people prematurely guessed this would be a song about Barack Obama, who talked a lot about "change" during his campaign. He also talked about "hope," and a few albums ago Dylan told us that he "left all [his] dreams and hopes buried under tobacco leaves." Here he tells us, in a unique way, that they never did him any good: "Dreams never did work for me anyway, even when they did come true." This last bit deepens the song's sadness by imbueing it with a sense of futility.
Later, Dylan sings to the woman in the song, who embodies whatever hope is left, that she is "as ???? as ever" and that she "could start a fire." It sounds to me like he is saying she is as "Horace" as ever, but that makes no literal sense. Dylan has been quoting Ovid lately, so I wouldn't put it past him to namedrop Horace (maybe one of the lyric hounds should be sniffing around Horace's "Ars Poetica" and looking for clues), but it makes no sense. He could be saying she is "hoarse," but Dylan's not the pot to call the kettle black, it sounds to my ears as though he utters two syllables, and that still makes no sense. A third option is "porous," and pumice, a rock formed as lava cools, is porous....
The song's best lines, though, come at the end: "I'm listening to Billy Joe Shaver and I'm reading James Joyce. Some people tell meI've got the blood of the land in my voice." These lines are powerful, but the music in this song is light and breezy, like jazz floating across on a summer breeze. It doesn't sound like there's any blood in the voice, especially not that of the land. That isn't to say the song isn't enjoyable; it has the same feel as the better-than-half-the-album "Spirit On the Water" off of Modern Times, but whereas that song, with its lyrics that suggest it is from the point of view of Cain trying to make amends at the end of his life, succeeds at blending the lyrics and the melody, here the lyrics seem better suited to an arrangement like that of "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'." Had he set the lyrics of "I Feel A Change Comin' On" to that sort of beat, he'd have a real masterpiece on his hands. As it is, I'm anticipating a strong album and an enjoyable listen, but nothing that is going to turn anyone's head upside down.
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