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Positively
Four-Star
By
Carlo Wolff Bob Dylan
Modern
Times (Columbia)
Meet the
new Bob Dylan, the first and still the best. The latest version
is gregarious, user-friendly, comfortable with new formats—and,
as usual, iconic and enigmatic. Dylan is giving interviews
and embracing new technology; the iTunes spot for Modern Times
is hip and sexy and swinging, like the record itself. This
fall, he’s even going to be on Broadway, in The Times
They Are A-Changin,’ another Twyla Tharp collaboration
(didn’t she just do one featuring Billy Joel?). Dylan
countercultural? Hardly. But he’s still intractably trendy
and provocative. His new album, ambiguous title and all, proves
it.
Modern
Times, his 31st album, is very good, so good it’s a pleasure
to spin again and again. It’s not as dramatic as Time
out of Mind, his 1997 “comeback,” or as oracular
as Love and Theft, the disc that cemented his reputation once
again. But it’s more natural than either. It’s topical
and elusive, referencing everything from 9/11 to Tommy Tucker
to the Five Satins to Alicia Keys; even the economy comes
into Dylan’s focus, on “Workingman’s Blues,”
and Katrina rears her horrifying head (obliquely, or course)
in “When the Levee Breaks,” one of the toughest
rockers.
At times,
Dylan’s in love: “I’ve been sittin’ down
studyin’ the art of love/I think it will fit me like
a glove,” he confesses in “Thunder on the Mountain,”
the surging rocker that launches the album and sets its multifaceted
agenda. At the same time, he can be misogynistic: “Someday
Baby,” the coiled rocker at the center of the album,
features lyrics as spiteful and stinging as the music.
Not only
is Dylan’s writing sharp, he’s singing relatively
on-key (think Nashville Skyline an octave deeper), and his
band may be the best he’s ever worked with. Leave it
to Dylan to assemble a country-rock combo with brushwork-heavy
jazz drumming, so the music swings like mad but is soft; move
over, Dire Straits. Dylan says it’s the best band he’s
ever worked with (the groups on Highway 61 and Bringing It
All Back Home weren’t bad, and there was that gang he
worked with called the Band). Their playng is certainly the
most sinuous.
The tunes
are fine, indeed: “Someday Baby,” despite its political
incorrectness, is as sexy as “Highway 61,” and “Ain’t
Talkin’,” the slowly whirling closer, is fabulously
connotative, as if to reconfirm Dylan’s ability to say
something even when he claims he’s mute (the guy’s
a fabulous kidder). “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,”
Dylan’s freshly apocalyptic rewrite of the old Muddy
Waters tune, rocks like a train, and “Beyond the Horizon,”
a ballad in the Leon Redbone vein, is downright dainty.
Are there
conclusions to draw from this? No, as usual. Modern Times
doesn’t seem to be the completion of a trilogy because
Time out of Mind and Love and Theft are more thematic. Modern
Times, which covers all sorts of terrain, is an album that
stands quite well on its own, resonating fresh and penetrating
deeply. And it’s a distinct pleasure to listen to. May
Dylan record more such triumphantly musical albums with this
group, his personal “cowboy band.”
Spitfire
Self
Help (Goodfellow)
Not challenging.
Not avant-garde. Not intimidating. Not poised. Not heavy.
Not soulful. Not smart. Not uplifting. Not articulate. Not
dynamic. Not indemnifying. Not astute. Not eclectic. Not enlightening.
Not lightning. Not evocative. Not ballistic. Not divine. Not
roguish. Not reassuring. Not resonant. Not reproachful. Not
liberating. Not cutworm. Not breathless. Not imperious. Not
tantric. Not prescient. Not scary. Not funny. Not a fire-eater.
Not a lady-killer. Not self. Not help. Not good driving music.
Not good.
—Bill
Ketzer
Arnold
Steinhardt
American
Journey (Naxos)
As the
founding first violinist of the Guarneri Quartet, Arnold Steinhardt
has championed a repertory that mixes the standards with the
new and unusual. As a soloist, he has leaned even more toward
the latter, and his latest CD, American Journey, skillfully
and shrewdly brings together the music of eight native composers
even as it travels among a variety of musical stylings, wrapping
up with a Latin beat.
Robert
Russell Bennett’s “Hexapoda” enjoyed its most
widespread exposure through Jascha Heifetz’s 1945 recording,
which has continued to slip in and out of the catalogue ever
since. Steinhardt has the advantage of far better recorded
sound, and his performance—with his brother Victor at
the piano, as is true for most of this disc—brings a
warmer, more intimate feeling to the piece that Heifetz’s
stylish but steely version. Subtitled “Five Studies in
Jitteroptera,” the 1940 attempts the potentially embarrassing
task of fusing classical and swing. In this case, Bennett
leavens the piece with enough wit to keep it from taking itself
too seriously.
It’s
a nice contrast to Lukas Foss’ “Three American Pieces,”
a lyrical suite written when the still-living composer was
22, and rather different in style from what Foss later would
write. Leonard Bernstein was almost the same age when he penned
his Violin Sonata, but the Bernsteinian gestures of harmony
and rhythm already are in place, not to mention some taxing
demands on the performers that are easily fulfilled.
Henry
T. Burleigh’s works for violin have all but disappeared
from recital programs, but his four-movement “Southland
Sketches” provide a compelling argument for returning
them. Classical in approach, they incorporate spirituals,
hymn tunes and other musical vernacular, deftly woven into
a more formalized context.
The Latin
segment begins with Victor Steinhardt’s own “Tango,”
a surprisingly haunting work that explores the titular rhythm
as it eases through a cheerful moment into a soft finale characterized
by a couple of downward glissandos.
Pianist
(and longtime friend and associate) Lincoln Mayorga takes
over the keyboard for his own “Bluefields: A West Hollywood
Rumba for Arnold.” It’s a short, cheerful work that
recalls the spirit of “Hexapoda.” Dave Grusin takes
over as pianist for his own “Three Latin-American Dances,”
which also adds cellist Amanda Forsyth. Busy but lighthearted
pieces, they conclude the disc—and the journey—with
pizzazz. This is a charming disc that offers excellent alternatives
to the standard violin encore fare.
—B.A.
Nilsson
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