Time Out Of Mind - Bob Dylan (1997)

ideated from: a favorite album that starts with ‘T’. Like before, I could have gone multiple paths picking a Dylan record that starts with T, but I haven’t had as long to live with Tempest

On a biographical note, I have a fond memory of my wife having gone out to buy this record the day of release while I was at work and surprising me by having it playing when I got home.

This is the second Dylan record produced by Daniel Lanois (the other one already having been written up). Dylan had spent the years since Oh Mercy mostly on the so-called never-ending tour, along with two records of old folk and blues tunes and an MTV Unplugged session (there was one other studio record of guest-splattered, tossed off originals, Under The Red Sky, which nobody really wants to talk about). Whatever caused the Poet to get his songwriting groove back, he wound up with a pretty high quality batch here.

The band is sprawling and organic, recording live for the most part. Lanois gets a lot of grit and finesse into the recordings. The sound is kind of a mashup of classic songbook, blues, rockabilly, and western swing. It ends up being quite distinctive compared to anything else out at the time, although not that much different from where Dylan himself was headed in the following decades.

The vocals here are probably the first time in decades he really leaned into concentrating on phrasing and melody to do more than just rasping out the lyrics he’d written. His vocals would actually get better in the following years, imo, but this is a great start.

Edit: by coincidence, this is running just a week after Dylan released a large set of outtakes and alternates from these sessions as a part of his Bootleg Series

Tracks I Liked

Love Sick - A nasty little tune to get things started. Slow build up to intro the sound we’ll be hearing.

Million Miles - a swinging blues tune that is one example of maybe having too many musicians in the room. His live versions clear away the clutter and sound much better.

Not Dark Yet - a true classic, and one of the best Dylan songs I know of. Fatalistic, but still fully human. He avoids despair and cynicism even when it seems like he has every right to be cynical.

Highlands - oddly, not his best or most successful historically-inspired 15-minute epic