Bob Dylan - 'Modern Times' (SonyBMG) Released 28/08/06

Imagine this. It’s 1996, and the phone on Bob Dylan’s tour bus rings. The patron saint of revitalised veteran rockers is on the blower. “Still on the road, Bob?” “Yup, just heading for another joint,” replies the bard who in his mid-60's pomp provided rock ‘n’ roll with brains. What follows is a murmured discussion conducted in hipster jargon and half-remembered blues phrases, at the end of which it’s agreed. Dylan shall be relevant again.

Maybe that’s not what happened, but somehow Dylan did get his groove back. Ten years ago, he was over the hill, a rusty relic stuck to churning out endless erratic one-nighters in venues the size his nostalgia-courting contemporaries might use for rehearsals. Today, following 2004's autobiography 'Chronicles', last year's reverential Martin Scorcese documentary 'No Direction Home' and, most importantly, two dispatches of new tunes, 1997's compellingly gloomy 'Time Out of Mind' and 'Love & Theft' (2001), a mischievous masterwork that shimmies, shakes and shoots wisecracking one-liners with mirth not far removed from the classic ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, Dylan is front-page material again, and the release of 'Modern Times' is a certified Event few artists unveiling their gazillionth or so LP can hope to drum up.

Anyone expecting the one-time prophet of protest to impart with ageless wisdom or reverse back to his early 60's finger-pointing phase has turned up at the wrong do. “I got to pork chop, she got the pie”, Bob Dylan croaks in a gruff voice that suggests he’s swallowed a bucket or two of gravel and nails on ‘Thunder On The Mountain’, possibly not with a picnic in mind. Which pretty much sets the tone for much of the album, as Dylan puts on the battered boots of a wizened but far from finished bard trawling muddy back roads and dusty outputs in the hope of fulfilling more primal needs than the quest for enlightenment or justice. Although he’s aware that “everybody’s got to wonder what’s the matter with this cruel world today”, the Dylan of 'Modern Times' is often too busy cataloguing the irresistible charms or wicked ways of one special lady or another to fully register the craziness and destruction brewing all around him. But the constant drawing from the woe-filled well of heartbreak and trouble doesn’t lead to self-pity, on the contrary: even when Dylan’s busy bemoaning his latest beastly partner, you’re never far a knowing smirk, a dazzling turn of phrase, an ear-catching couplet or a bout of boastful bragging.