Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan's Together Through Life has humble origins, starting as a single song ("Life Is Hard") written for a new film by La Vie en Rose director Olivier Dahan. Before long, Dylan's 33rd studio album was in the works. As a guiding light, "Life Is Hard" sets an appropriate tone as a mournful tale of love lost—a recurring theme that returns in gut-punch lines like "The door has closed forevermore / If indeed there ever was a door." While Dylan shows off a surprisingly tender vocal on "Life Is Hard"—he's always been a master of coaxing the most out of what many dismiss as a limited instrument—he mostly sings in the gravelly, wizened rasp that's become familiar to fans. In some ways, his voice has finally caught up to the world-weariness and emotional drainage of his songs; this in part accounts for the critical fervor that’s met his most recent albums, starting with 1997’s Time Out of Mind and continuing through Love and Theft and Modern Times.

While there’s plenty of devastation running through Together Through Life—personal relationships gone to ruin, set against the backdrop of a world that seems to be well past its prime—Dylan often keeps the tone playful rather than ponderous. On the blues tale "My Wife's Home Town"—co-credited to Willie Dixon for its liberal melodic sampling from "I Just Wanna Make Love To You"—Dylan slyly reveals that the geography in question is not some Midwestern burg but rather the fiery pits of Hell. Levity also comes from his bandmates, particularly David Hidalgo (Los Lobos) on accordion on rollicking tracks like “If You Ever Go to Houston.” Forget French cinema; Together Through Life would be right at home as the soundtrack to some boozy, smoky night in a bordertown tavern.

—Adam McKibbin
05.11.09

By all accounts, Together Through Life arrived quickly, cut swiftly by Bob Dylan and his touring band in the fall of 2008, surprising the label upon its delivery a couple months later, then rushed into stores in April 2009, just half a year after the release of the monumental archive project Tell Tale Signs. Given the speed of its creation, it fits that the album has a spontaneous, kinetic kick, feeling so alive that it's a little messy, teeming with contradictions, crossed signals, and frayed ends. That liveliness turns Together Through Life into a much lighter affair than its weighty predecessor, Modern Times, which was tinged with doom and had thematic unity, two things missing from this comparatively breezy affair. If Together Through Life is about any one thing, it is -- as its title and cover photo elliptically suggest -- the enduring power of romance, how it provides sustenance and how its absence can make life hard. But all this suggests that Dylan has turned in a meditation on the meaning of life and love here, when its core charm is its very modesty. It's an old-fashioned ten tracks, clocking in at 45 minutes, a simple set of songs co-written with Robert Hunter -- Jerry Garcia's lyricist and previous Dylan collaborator, co-writing the irresistibly jaunty "Silvio" in 1988 -- and delivered without adornment, its clean yet earthy production slyly emphasizing the musical variety here. Sonically, this is right in line with Dylan's 2000s albums, the sound of a well-lubricated traveling band easing into the same chords it plays every night, but this isn't strictly roadhouse rock & roll: Dylan remains fixated on pre-rock & roll American music, emphasizing the blues but eager to croon love-struck ballads. In this context, David Hidalgo's accordion -- which appears so often it soon ceases to be noteworthy -- can suggest a romantic stroll down Parisian streets or a steamy sojourn with Doug Sahm in a Tex-Mex border town, but everything here is recognizably, thoroughly Dylan's mythic picturesque America that stretches from the hazy past to the barbed present. While the music is proudly, almost defiantly, rooted in the past, with Dylan borrowing Willie Dixon's "I Just Want to Make Love to You" wholesale for the riotous "My Wife's Home Town," there's no avoidance of the present here, with Bob even going so far as to turn the omnipresent catch phrase "It's All Good" into a mordantly funny rocker. Dylan's not just aware of the modern-day vernacular, he's wound up with an album that fits the spirit of 2009: it's troubled but hopeful, firmly in favor of love and romance, but if that fails there are always romantic dreams and sardonic jokes to get you through life. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide