Three Cords and the Truth: Bob Dylan, "Modern Times"

In the first seconds of the intro track "Thunder on the Mountain," Dylan links the ever developing story of American music from its ancient past to its still bright future and at the same time plugs Alicia Keys. How? Well, Dylan besides obviously being an Alicia Keys fan is also the golden strand of American music that spans from Woody Guthrie to well almost every American musical genre. Starting out on rebellious folk music (which was inspired by his hero Guthrie) Dylan made rock n' roll a serious artistic medium, in that he was the first to play rock with serious and poetic lyrics containing a biting social commentary (see "Highway 61 Revisited," this album convinced a band from Liverpool that pop and rock could be about more than holding hands).

Throughout his career he has dabbled in and mastered almost every traditional American music form including country and gospel. Anyone who is anyone in popular music has a debt to pay to the man. And so it is here with "Modern Times" that Dylan turns into that deepest and most primordial of American art forms, the blues. Here is an album full of the human condition, to mention another Dylan album a "World Gone Wrong." Women leave, death is nearby, the world is cruel, there is failure and pain, lives are gambled away, all to a kind of antebellum, turn of the century sensibility. At times, Dylan's lyrics seem in tune with David's lament songs, too many women, too much excess, too many enemies. Still, Dylan turns quickly to the redemptive. A good life with a good woman is near at hand. Loyalty and love are the remedies, repentance is there for the taking, and God is nearby waiting to enact his kingdom and enact holy justice. Dylan's lyrics are ripe with meaning and every song functions on several levels, but often they point to romantic love or they point to God.

Gigabytes of memory could be used up plumbing the depths of his lyrics, so I won't try to exegete them in full. Sin and pain are real and deserved but it is only the love of a woman or God, and probably both that can save. "Spirit on the Water" reminisces God's creation and the fall "I can't go to paradise no more/ I killed a man back there" and the timeless tension between man and woman, mirrored in Adam and Eve. "Beyond the Horizon" points to the eternal with themes of love, forgiveness, and the hope of fulfilled life for at the end of the "rainbow life has only begun." Here there is a nice image of forgiveness and starting over in the new kingdom where: "My wretched heart is pounding/ I felt an angel's kiss/ My memories are drowning/ In mortal bliss." "Thunder on the Mountain" points us to Moses and Mount Sinai, with God's presence throughout. It seems to be addressed directly to God, with promises of almost prophet like service, with the steely swagger of an old West gun for hire. The world is broke and bankrupt and it needs someone like Moses to step in and fill the gap, with an eshcatalogical fulfillment of: "Thunder on the mountain rolling to the ground/ Gonna get up in the morning walk the hard road down/ Some sweet day I'll stand beside my king/ I wouldn't betray your love or any other thing."

Through these themes of love, redemption, sin, mercy, justice, and loss strung across time from the Old Testament to turn of th century America, Dylan shows us that these themes still ring true and important in even our supposed modern times. In this he shows us that the blues are as old as Moses and just as relevant today, as they have ever been, to both Americans and humans. Never mind that his album debuted at number one, Dylan is just as effective and palpable as he was 40 years ago.