Bob Dylan's Modern Times

Is there anyone else out there who finds Dylan's new album a total snooze? So many critics have fallen over themselves to proclaim this a masterpiece that it's got me clicking my flashlight, asking myself whether it's me or them that's insane. (Clever little Dylan allusion there, huh?)

Consider this my unqualified dissent. The songs on Modern Times are interminable, the melodies are derivative or amateurish, and the backing tracks are a mess of first-take noodling and comping. Dylan's singing has never really bothered me before (OK, it kind of bothered me in the 80s when he was singing entirely through his nose), but now it's a weird little croak that makes it difficult to decipher the lyrics. Which, given the lack of melodies and decent playing on this album, would be the only redeeming aspect of the record. What lyrics I can make out sound like Dylan reading his notebooks; there's no discernable shape or direction to any of the songs.

The songs are so all-over-the-place that I was beginning to suspect that there was no editing involved in the songwriting for Modern Times. If something was written, by God it was going to end up somewhere on the album. However, my research has led to the discovery that there was some editing in the songwriting process. It was minor, to be sure--a single couplet was excised from one song--but it was an edit nonetheless. Having unearthed the missing couplet, I present it here for your edification:

Every couplet I wrote wound up in one of these songs
That's why each track on this album is so ungodly long!

I got this album about the same time I got Dion's Bronx in Blue. Both are blues-infused albums by veteran geniuses of rock. But only one is a joy and a revelation, and it ain't Zimmy's, babe. No, no, no.

PS There is someone else out there: this guy, and his take on the album is quite astute. Check it out.