I’ve read Ann Powers, Ben Ratliff and Tom Moon’s reviews of Bob Dylan’s new Together Through Life and I’d like to hear it like Powers does – but so far, I find it hard to find an interesting handle on it. Much of it I hear as the product of a music fan trying to emulate the bluesmen he loves, down to the curdled humor of “My Wife’s Home Town” (hint: it’s “Hell”), the rump shaker (”Shake Shake Mama”) and the closing time slow dance (”This Dream of You”, “I Feel a Change Comin’ On”).

And maybe that’s the story, but “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’” and “Forgetful Heart” have a pronounced gravity that much of the rest of the album lacks. They suggest there’s more to this than just Dylan’s on-again, off-again relationship with his mysterious woman. Or maybe they just have the most interesting language of the album, and the rest of it feels easy because of its relatively conversational vocabulary and syntax. The album ends awkwardly with “It’s All Good,” with a litany of troubles ironically punctuated by the a pop cultural phrase that already feels as dated as “Talk to the hand.”

It’s possible I’m frustrated by the album because I found a way into Modern Times almost immediately, whereas Together Through Life remains pesky for me after a weekend of listening. Or, perhaps I felt like I had an understanding of Dylan and he put out an album that made me question that take. Or, perhaps after a string of remarkable albums, he paused to take a breath. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.

               

When Hurricane Katrina leveled Peter Holsapple’s house, he left town and hasn’t been back nearly often enough. He has, however, been blogging on songwriting for The New York Times. In today’s posting, “Thank You, Bob,” he talks about aging, making peace with collaboration and Bob Dylan’s Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8:

Dylan’s latest record, “Tell Tale Signs,” features three more versions of his song “Mississippi” that are considerably different from the version from “Love and Theft” that we’ve all known and loved for several years. It’s exciting to hear someone else going through the winnowing and polishing process, especially an acknowledged master like Bob Dylan. The confidence, the element of surprise, the ability to make an entire set of lyrics come alive in a whole ‘nother way simply by wholesale revision of the band’s arrangement… that’s what this new Dylan record represents to me, license for change.

               

More Dylan incarnations: “Down in the Basement” by Sloan on Parallel Play, which turns one musical line from “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and literalizes the phrase to make it about domesticity and rock ‘n’ roll.

Here’s another set of Dylans in another Riddle, Missouri, courtesy of The New York Times.

               

At “Clap, Clap,” Mike Barthel has an interesting essay on Miley Cyrus that dovetails nicely on my thoughts on I’m Not There. He wrote:

If the construction of character through multiple streams that duplicate and build on existing information just seems like the way the media works–then Hannah Montana fits right in. 

Substitute “Dylan” for “Hannah Montana” and his thoughts on the construction of celebrity are right on point. John Lydon had it wrong – his public image belongs to all of us, and it’s created from fact and fiction, the things he did and the things he’s purported to have done. It’s the product of his behavior offstage and the roles he has played, including talent show judge and reality TV contestant. The truth and the tall tales play equal parts in creating our understanding of any public figure, and that definitely includes Dylan, who has chosen to participate in the process in his own way by writing Chronicles, recording Modern Times, and doing a radio show that reinforces certain elements of the image while adding new, sentimental wrinkles at the same time. Barthel contends that the creation of celebrity has become its own form of entertainment and, to extend his thought, The Daily 10, the slick tabloids and Ryan Seacrest are on the cutting edge of covering it while creating it. It’s a form of entertainment that has its own language – Brangelina, Bennifer, BFF – that’s startling in its glib emptiness – but it’s no more insular than the language of Dylanologists. Bob invented so many things – might as well add Debbie Matenopoulos to the list.

               

I saw I’m Not There at a press screening with a handful of people. Not surprisingly, Dylan fans loved it, but those who were just there to see a movie were crabby and perplexed on their way out. I wondered then if you had to know Dylan’s story to make any sense of the movie, and if the movie didn’t share the relationship that a good cover version has to the recording covered. I also wonder if the movie doesn’t share a similar relationship with the libraries of Dylan-inspired biography and criticism. You can certainly see visions of Greil Marcus’ thoughts play out on the screen.

As much as I enjoyed the movie the first time around, I admired it even more after hearing Todd Haynes’ commentary on the DVD. For Dylan nuts, his takes on Dylan are interesting, particularly his thoughts on freedom that come near the end of the film. But the movie itself is an even deeper, more complex experience when you realize that there weren’t only sources for the film’s images and film styles, but for the script itself. Haynes talks about it as if it were a collage. Scenes weren’t simply based on moments in Dylan’s life and legend; the dialogue itself was pulled from songs, films and interviews. The sermon that precedes “Moving On” was one he delivered onstage during the Slow Train Coming era.