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A conversation between Tyler and Writers’ Loom guest Travis.

Travis: So, Tyler, what made you choose Time Out of Mind as an album to recommend listening to and talking about, out of all the many Bob Dylan albums outside of his “classic era” however one might define it.

Tyler: Well, I whittled the catalog down to a handful of LPs that represented significant creative detours. Street-Legal with its horns and ooh-ing backing vocals; Infidels, a record brought to life by gauzy production and rhythm from Sly & Robbie.  Both of those albums have their triumphs, but there are some unfortunate clunkers weighing down the pair.

Time Out Of Mind, on the other hand, is a hard left turn from Dylan that—to my ear—stays consistent. It received a lot of acclaim at the time, taking home the Grammy for Album of the Year—somewhat infamously over Radiohead’s OK Computer.  That pedigree actually kept me away from TOOM for a while, because I wanted something even more obscure.

When I came to it, though, some time into the rush of my latter-day Dylan fandom, I was taken by it.  That affection has grown steadier with time, too.  There’s a method that’s pretty obvious here, ballad, bluesy rocker, ballad, bluesy rocker.  I think it’s okay, though, in this instance.

Travis: I remembered the Grammy and “Soy Bomb” performance but couldn’t have told you anything about the actual album or any songs from it. Or so I thought. Apparently “Make You Feel My Love” is something I’ve heard a million times, covered by a million different artists, and recognize as if it is a part of my soul. Listening to it here, I totally get why it is a standard. Also, I hate it with every fiber of my being. Truly insipid. I’m glad it’s pretty much an outlier on the album, most of which I like, with a couple of of MAJOR exceptions.

Tyler: “Make You Feel My Love” isn’t one of my choice tracks.  I admire its earnestness, which feels genuine, but I do not like listening to it.

Travis: Would you like to go positive first or negative first?

Tyler: Let’s hit up those negatives.

Travis: okay. Tryin’ To Get to Heaven is a solo Eric Clapton ass song. All it’s missing is a really white guy struggleface guitar solo that any Guitar Center employee could play. Even production wise it doesn’t feel like it fits, it feels way glitzier and brighter than the atmosphere of most of the tracks. This song feels way longer than the nearly 20 minutes song that rounds out the album

Tyler: I feared, I feared that at some point you’d make a Clapton comparision. Soul-crushing.

Travis: Til I Fell in Love With You is not nearly as bad, but I don’t like it. It’s pretty Blueshammer, Stevie Ray Vaughan could spurt some licks all over it.

and then Make You Feel My Love, Rod Stewart in 1984 ass, American Idol ass

Tyler: “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven”…to me it feels of a piece with “Standing In The Doorway,” but I like “Doorway” better.

Travis: “Standing in the Doorway” felt to me more of a piece with the parts of the album that I liked productionwise, it wasn’t one of my favorites but I liked it. Really those three “Tryin to Get to Heaven,” “Make You Feel My Love,” and “Till I Fell in Love With You” are my skips on this.

Tyler: “Til I Fell In Love With You” is one of the tracks I figured you’d flag for White Blues Syndrome.

Truth be told—and this is coming from a listener who enjoys this album—the bluesier tracks blend together a bit here.  I say that not as a criticism.  I’m one who thinks that this album maintains a particular mood, and those chunky pieces are needed in between those ballads.

I’m not gonna throw “Million Miles” out anywhere near the top of any “favorite Dylan tracks” list, categories be damned.  But it’s gotta be here.

Travis: I think there is plenty of “bluesiness” throughout in the songs I like as well. It depends a lot on the individual song and its vibe. I think the vibe or atmosphere matters a lot with this album, to me. I think those three songs in particular don’t fit for whatever reason. I haven’t sat with the album as much as you have so I may be a little off, but that’s my impression.

I liked “Million Miles”. It’s one of the songs on here that feels like Dylan may have been listening to some of the artists I like who are heavily influenced BY him. To me with that little blurting organ it could have been a Tom Waits song or Murder Ballads-era Nick Cave.

Or maybe Daniel Lanois was the influence of that particular sound

I REALLY like the atmosphere of most of this album. It has a surreal dive bar/juke joint vibe that conjures up an environment like a place like that in a movie. Not in a real place, but in a movie specifically. That’s the vibe I got.

Tyler: I’ll note at this point that Lanois and Dylan had worked together before, on the far more compact 1989 release Oh Mercy.  That’s another one I thought might be of interest to you, but TOOM had far more considerable an impact on his career trajectory.  Oh Mercy needed time to sink in.

Time Out Of Mind is so atmospheric, indeed, and like you, I like where it takes me.

Travis: Yeah. Generally I like the spare backing music, occasional overlapping of organ and Rhodes piano, empty space in a lot of the songs

Tyler: So wild that the sound works in that way.  The sessions were apparently a bit chaotic, overflowing with musicians.

One thing that holds true for me is how much more effective this thing sounds after dark. Like a movie, the lights should be dim for proper enjoyment.

Travis: I should note that I am something of a Bob Dylan skeptic. I like some of his material but even the stuff I like most I would say I “appreciate” more than really love on a visceral level. I own Blonde on Blonde and Nashville Skyline on vinyl and rarely if ever throw them on unless someone wants to listen to them. I also know Highway 61 pretty well just from being an overeducated white guy who was once 20. That said, I think the Bob Dylan voice impression is a wack attempt to make fun of him. There are plenty of “good-bad” singers. I think his voice for the most part works well with the songs he writes, whether he “sings well” or not.

there is one moment, however, on this album that BEGS for BobDylanVoice impersonation, and that is when he says “steel” on “Not Dark Yet”

On the Bob Dylan genius front, I didn’t notice anything lyric wise on this album that stuck out to me as good or bad, though. I think the way this album is, that’s for the best.

Tyler: See, that’s something worthy of exploration.  Oh Mercy was the first album of Dylan’s where he sings in that lower, craggly register.  Up until then he’d been pushing the limits of the nasality that fueled a thousand whiny impersonations.

Blonde On Blonde is a tremendous album that makes me nervous.  It vibrates and it’s rickety and it gives me anxiety, so I rarely put it on.  Nashville Skyline is in my regular rotation.  Love that charming, under-thirty-minutes classic.

Travis: maybe some of the “old bob” came out just for that one word on one song.

Tyler: Honestly, most of the albums I play regularly aren’t The Classics.  I’m interested in the wild variation of Dylan styles, be it that countrified Skyline sound, or the spare Western darkness of John Wesley Harding, or even the groove on his first Christian record, Slow Train Coming.  His catalog is all over the place.

Yeah.  The lyrics here aren’t turning cartwheels or anything.  It’s a relatively straightforward series of romantic narratives.

Travis: I gotta say my favorite song on this one is the epic closer. Because this album is “vibes” to me, carrying the groove for 16 minutes is my shit

Tyler: Yes.  “Highlands” works.  Well.

“Can’t Wait” is one hell of a prelude, too, carrying a pretty lengthy simmer in its own right.

Travis: agreed

Tyler: “Highlands” is a dream narrative and I fucking love it for that.  Back in the early days you’ve got jams like “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” or something like that.  I dig the imagery in those songs, and I *really* love what he comes up with this time around.

Dylan-nerd famous, almost certainly apocryphal story: a label executive witnessed the performance of “Highlands” that made the album.  Told Dylan, that’s great, is there a short version?  Dylan responds: “That was the short version.”

Travis: This album scratches an itch I almost always have, which is: music that takes the haunting or eerie quality that showed up in a lot of early rock and roll and roots music and runs with it.

American Gothic Goth, if you will

Tyler: I dig that.

Another curious turn is that, while Dylan has good feelings about the earlier Lanois work and Oh Mercy, he doesn’t feel very positive about how this album hangs together.

Travis: that’s a bummer.

Tyler: Eh, he’s always rewriting “Tangled Up In Blue.”

Travis: side note: I have looked up what else Time Out of Mind was up against and my thoughts are lol grammys

Tyler: Oh boy.  Dare I derail the conversation even momentarily to ask?

Travis: Babyface: The Day

Tyler: HA

Travis: Flaming Pie (which I wouldn’t know if its good or not but of course it was up for album of the year)

and Paula Cole: The Fire

Tyler: There is a stretch of interstate near Indianapolis designated as the Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds whatever highway.

Paula Cole, huh

Flaming Pie has pretty solid moments and some real dross.

Travis: Just to toss a wreath in the direction of the conversation, I think OK Computer is better than Time Out of Mind, but it’s also entirely apples and oranges

Tyler: I’m mostly blind to Radiohead.  I’ll put on Kid A if it’s like 12 AM and I’m feeling confused about my life’s direction.

Travis: I have a whole spiel about how In Rainbows is the best Radiohead album, which has nothing to do with Time Out of MInd.

Just that In Rainbows synthesizes all of the good things about Radiohead’s previous albums from OK Computer through Kid A and Amnesiac to Hail to the Thief, integrating the electronic and experimental elements organically into a series of 10 relatively concise, catchy rock songs. It has no skips, and I skip songs on all of their other albums.

aside done. carry on

Tyler: Observations noted. Well done.

I must say, Time Out Of Mind is one of my more frequent Dylan listens.  That mood it captures, like you note, is one I’ll happily slip into much of the time.

Dylan found a different, cleaner sound starting with his next album, 2001’s Love and Theft.  That’s been his wheelhouse since, continuing through the now-predictably acclaimed Rough and Rowdy Ways.

Love and Theft is great, but it’s often jaunty.  I don’t feel jaunty particularly often.

Travis: on which album is the hit bob dylan song “i like thick women, of which alicia keys is one”

by the way, bob, i agree, alicia keys is indeed thick, or thicc as i believe it is now spelled, and that is a good thing

Tyler: Y’know, any reference to Alicia Keys’s figure escapes my memory.  The track you reference is “Thunder On The Mountain” from the great ’06 album Modern Times.

I used to think that Keys shout-out was a little wack, but dude’s been doing that shit from the start.

Young buck Bob talking about making love to Elizabeth Taylor.

Travis: i do not begrudge him either reference

Tyler: So shall we wrap things up?  I’m glad you found things to like in Time Out Of Mind, and I’m delighted that your choice bop is “Highlands.”

Travis: Lettuce wrap things up. Since I liked Time Out of Mind, where should I go next?

Tyler: Oh Mercy.  It’s got a similar mood and clocks in at under forty minutes.

Other Dylan albums I’d recommend to anybody. Before The Flood, the absolutely fire live double-LP he released with The Band.

The Basement Tapes.  I don’t give a damn about Greil Marcus and The Old Weird America.  I just think they’re delicious strange short near-diversions.

Infidels is often cited as a return to relative form after three albums of Christian proselytizing.  I love it, but there are some wack wack tracks on there.

One more, and it’s obvious.  Blood On The Tracks.  It is tremendous.

All those recommendations made, Bob Dylan is one particular taste for being a genius-tier legend.  Unlike the Beatles, he can be a tough nut to crack.

Travis: Right on. I have no further things to say. Other than I hate when rock critics or record collectors call him “Zimmy”

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