February 10, 2007 - Bob Dylan’s latest masterpiece, Modern Times, is by far his most powerful album to date. The album starts out with the song Thunder on the Mountain which speaks of everything ranging from the Voice of God, war, lust to the longings of love from a good woman who will do just as he says.  This song by far sets the tone for Dylan’s thirty first studio album which was recorded in New York City all within
a month’s time.

The album is well balanced and every song is placed in such
an order that you can practically hear the sounds of the past fading and feel the tidal wave of modernization looming on the horizon.  Dylan uses his road band to fill in at the studio for this album. The sound that they bring to the table is one of seasoned veterans who have seen and heard it all and nothing fazes them. A sort of worn in comfortable feel that can only be acquired through years and years of steady touring and endless nights spent on tour busses  drinking whiskey and reminiscing over life love and the art of making music. They take Dylan’s words and transform them into a musical masterpiece. Even if Dylan had at any point decided to stop singing his musicians could tell the story note for note, making for the perfect marriage of music and lyric, not two separate entities but one powerful force.

The album not only tells the story of Dylan’s own personal evolution but of the American journey through modernization.  You are taken back to a time before the mechanics of modern living were prevalent throughout every city and state, a time when people would sit on their front porch and drink out of mason jars and the sounds of the old jazz greats reverberated through the heavens.  Dylan is commanding and forceful yet amazingly more relaxed on this album than ever before. He sings with the strength of a general who has seen war and been to hell and back. Each note rolls off his tongue with the confidence of one who knows where he has been and is adapting to the change that is inevitable. His sound and style stay true to the Dylan sound that we have heard throughout the decades they are more than mere melodies but a window to his soul that if you look closely enough you can see the inner turmoil that he pours into each note and word.  "Feel like my soul is beginning to expand/Look into my heart and you will sort of understand/You brought me here, now you're trying to run me away/The writing's on the wall, come read it, come see what it say."

Dylan once again produces himself on this project, an art he has been perfecting since his first album back in 1962.  He is in total control of his sound and styles something that only a legend that has proven himself decades over can accomplish.  It’s very rare that people through their own experiences can elevate to such a level that they are no longer just a person but a presence. Dylan has accomplished this fete and it is something that is prevalent throughout this album. This may be the reason Dylan is able to transform mere words that are spoken with such ease and understandability into sermons of morality, love, lust and a higher power. “The nights filled with shadows, the years are filled with early doom/I've been conjuring up all these long-dead souls from their crumblin' tombs."

Songs such as “The Levees Gonna Break “are hard to listen to without thinking about the devastation that happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the catastrophic damage that it caused. Forever the activist Dylan addresses these issues in his own “Dylan-esque” way.  “If it keep on rainin', the levee gonna break. If it keep on rainin', the levee gonna break. Some of these people gonna strip you of all they can take”