Bob Dylan – Together Through Life

I love Bob Dylan, I’m sure that everyone knows that ... but at the same time, I’ve been struggling with Bob Dylan my whole life, and I’ve finally figured out why. It has to do with his voice, and what that voice brings to the music. Seriously, I’ve never been a fan of the early folk Dylan, and I’ve come to realize that I didn’t like the music because there wasn’t an honesty to it. Of course the songs were great, any of them could have been sung by Woody Guthrie, or by a long list of artists who rose from the Great Depression and out of the Dust Bowl of America. But the fact is that Dylan didn’t, yet there was this young man trying for all his might to sound like his heroes, singers who’s voices represented men with miles on the soles of their shoes, weathered voices from years of singing without a sound system, and from decades of smoking and drinking. I can only imagine what Bob’s early works would have sounded like had he just been himself, and owning the voice he had.

Of course Dylan’s styles have changed over the years as well, moving from the folk hero on Bob Dylan, to electric blues/rock genius on Bringing It All Back Home, and Highway 61, the surrealistic word poet on Blonde On Blonde, the down home country boy on The Basement Tapes, to the sweet country sounds of Nashville Skyline, and right up through the present. All of these voices were honest, though one could argue that all of those voices represented personalities of, or sides of Bob Dylan, therefore none of them were really real either. But here, here on Together Through Life is the first time I actually believe that I’m hearing the actual Bob Dylan after forty some years of music. And I think that’s why this album seems to be so ill received by so many.

People have dismissed this album saying that it sounds as if it were dashed off between shows while on tour, others have said that it should never have been produced by Jack Frost, while others will say that the songs were just momentary brain-thoughts that should have been held, rekindled, and given a roaring fire before they were put out. But not me, for the first time in my life I feel that Dylan owns his voice, a voice that after countless years of touring is finally authentically his ... damaged, raw, blistered, exhausted, grinding his words out from the back of his teeth, and shaking with an honesty that demands one comment, rather than just digging what he puts out there; and that to me marks perhaps the first real seminal turning point in the career of Bob Dylan.

The songs are fixed in a moment that will stand as profoundly as Beggar’s Banquet by the Rolling Stones [perhaps the most honest record they ever made, though arguably Let It Bleed could be placed side by side with that]. Together Through Life takes us on an adventure again, something Dylan has not done in years, and something I’ve seriously been waiting for for a very long time. Where does this record take you? Well that’s up to you ... for me Together Through Life seems to finally get Dylan back to Gallup, New Mexico, the place he says he first learned to be a song and dance man while working for the carnival, a place where there's always dust in the air, and the trains run right through the middle of town 24 hours a day.

This album was old and tired before it was recorded, the jacket was worn, the record scratched, and has pops in just the right places. This is the album it took Bob Dylan nearly 50 years to grow into, and as I listen to it, there’s a smile of satisfaction crossing my face as I look into the old man on the cover who’s looking back at me, for the first time in his life, owning his voice, and the honesty that goes with each of the songs you’re gonna hear.

Review by Jenell Kesler