Modern Times

The music is excellent, and I suspect we'll see a lot of these in live performance in the future. His live habit of jumping the octave at the end of the phrase makes an occasional appearance here (although it is used more sparingly than on stage). But many of these are songs made for performing.

Four stars, because the tight package the CD/DVD combo comes in has already scratched my CD to the point where it skips. Probably many of the reviewers here haven't put it away yet so they haven't noticed! But this for me means returning the package and getting hold of the CD only version, which comes with a much more protective standard case.

As others note, the DVD is nice, but short, more an advertisement for some of his other 90s albums than anything else. No doubt YouTube would serve equally well. And it's scratched too.

I've already written a swift review of this album after listening to a friends copy. Since then I've bought the dvd special edition, I did this thinking the extra money paid might be wasted (I bought from a high street retailer and it was actually an extra fiver!) but upon watching the dvd I am glad I shelled out the extra spondulicks. It doesn't actually say what is on the extra dvd in the amazon listing so I'm going to give you a quick rundown and review of the extra video tracks.

Track 1- Blood in my eyes- This is the promotional video for the single release from "World Gone Wrong" it's a sparse arrangement (just bob on guitar) of an old blues song but it's a great song and great performance. It's the video itself that's a revelation (until I bought modern times I didn't even know it existed), it features Bob in a top hat wandering around Camden, signing autographs and generally looking ecentric. The direction and cinematography (it's one of those arty, sepia affairs) are both great and the whole thing manages to look very natural and uncontrived.

Track 2- Love Sick. This is a live version from the Grammy's. "Love Sick" has always been my favourite track on "Time Out of Mind" and this is a superb version of it. Bob looks amazing wearing that white southern suit he always seemed to be wearing around this time, and he even plays some pretty cool lead guitar. Just out of interest there is a video of the White Stripes cover version of this song on the web that's pretty interesting.

Track 3- Things Have Changed- Another great promo video, this time from Curtis Hanson's "Wonder Boy's" film. Again a great song that if you are anything like me you don't listen to very often due to it not being on an album. Hanson himself directs and it seems to have been filmed on the original sets, it is filmed and cut in such a way that Dylan is inserted into the film. For example it appears that Katie Holmes is asking him rather than Toby Maguire to dance. He has really good screen presence throughout, the boy's got star quality.

Track 4- "Cold Irons Bounds"- a radically different (and in my opinion better) rendition of another "Time Out of Mind" track. Segments of this feature in the "Masked and Anymous" film which was written by none other than Jack Frost. However hear you have the full uninterrupted track filmed from one camera angle. And what a great camera angle it is, Dylan in the foreground with a guitarist over each shoulder and the drummer in the background. It's cool to see a whole performance without lots of flashy cutaways especially if it is done in a thoughtfully composed way.

All in all I would say it was definately worth getting the "limited" edition, especially as at amazon it is only a couple of extra quid plus you get a much nicer case for your cd and dvd!

I am a big fan of Bob dylans music and own many of his albums. I really enjoyed his early solo acoustic music and his early electric period. Albums like Blood on tracks are also excellent.

I could never get into some of his later albums and feel Dylan lost a certain something that made his earlier material such genious.

I was'nt sure what to expect from Modern times, but I was pleasantly surprised. Every song on this album has a unique sound and feel. The songs have a pleasant sound of Blues and Jazz. It made me feel like I listening to music from years ago. The range of musical sounds on Modern times is absolutely amazing. Dylans voice really does shine and specially on the softer tracks. Spirit on the water has to be my favourite track, but they are all excellent.

Modern Times shows that Dylan is still a highly talented songwriter and musician. Dylan fans will no doubt be interested in this album, but I think it could appeal to previously non Dylan listeners.