It was released as a single CD as well as a double studio album on vinyl, his first since The Basement Tapes in 1975.įor many fans and critics, the album marked Dylan's artistic comeback after he appeared to struggle with his musical identity throughout the 1980s he had not released any original material since Under the Red Sky in 1990. Fragments: Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996-1997) serves the showman well, making this era sing, one of The Bootleg Series’ most intriguing investigations so far into Bob Dylan’s working practices and mindset.Time Out of Mind is the thirtieth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on September 30, 1997, through Columbia Records. ![]() Time Out Of Mind ushered in Dylan as the troubadour for modern times, buffeted by life and scarred by loss, still nothing less than the showman as he sings on Standing In The Doorway, “strumming on my gay guitar, smoking a cheap cigar”. I Can’t Wait is fine and funky and the sole alternate capture of Make You Feel My Love allows Augie Meyers’ Hammond to move front and centre. The same can be heard on arguably the album’s standout track, Not Dark Yet, which moves from rock to western swing, and all sound definitive. Mississippi, possibly the most notorious reject of the sessions, is an amazing snapshot of Dylan’s open, evolving approach to his work – the first take is broadly rock, the second swing and the third country blues, all different to the version that later appeared on 2001’s Love And Theft. The alternates and outtakes are truly where the magic is: whereas Lanois would hone and refine performances, Dylan’s takes are fresher and more spontaneous, as producers Jeff Rosen and Steve Berkowitz note in the set’s extensive booklet: “It’s astonishing to listen as Dylan leans into every performance, thinking each take would be the last.” Unlike many collections that go behind the curtain, Fragments… serves to enhance Time Out Of Mind, not deconstruct it. The journey then winds from the initial Teatro recordings in California from January 1996 to the main Criteria sessions in Miami a year later, the whole album live (98-00) and with the fifthĭisc newly compiled but all previously available on Tell Tale Signs, the 2008 instalment of The Bootleg Series. To casual ears this may be difficult to assess, but the directness enhances the content considerably. It was reported that Dylan was never happy with producer Daniel Lanois’s final mix – this was the last time he worked with an outside producer – so that is attended to here with a brand-new stereo mix of the 1997 release that dials down the trademark “Lanois atmosphere”. In the latest instalment of the impeccably curated Bootleg Series, the era of ’96-97 is exhaustively visited over five discs. The biggest surprise retrospectively was, of course, how Make You Feel My Love, nestling away in the middle of the record, has become a standard, possibly the only Dylan song now familiar to the under-thirties. Time Out Of Mind was rapturously received and ultimately won three Grammy awards in 1998. But this lens does provide an intriguing one through which to view the twilight fatalism and pitch-black humour of songs here such as Love Sick and Million Miles. ![]() Some pored the shadowy material of Time Out Of Mind for pointers, despite the fact it was all written and recorded by the time he became ill. Influenced by early blues singers, Bob Dylan’s first collection of original songs since 1989 saw him stepping out of his wilderness, ushering in his third act with some of the strongest writing of his career.Īt the time, however, it seemed wholly possible that it may have been his final statement between recording and release, Dylan had contracted the potentially life-threatening condition, histoplasmosis, which saw him hospital bound and tour-cancelling. Time Out Of Mind, originally released in May 1997, is rightly held in the highest esteem by Bobcats the world over.
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