Time Out of Mind
Occupation
- Bob Dylan - vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano
- Tony Garnier - bass
- Jim Keltner - Drums
- Bucky Baxter - Guitar
- Jim Dickinson - Keyboards, Piano, Organ
Production
Time Out of Mind is the 30th studio album by American musician Bob Dylan, released by Columbia Records in 1997. It is one of the most acclaimed works of his long career and was, among other things won three Grammy Awards.
On this album, Dylan published the first time since the 1990 released album Under the Red Sky again his own compositions. After a long artistic crisis that started mid-eighties, he found his way back to a new musical style and had new songs with fans and critics alike success again.
Musically, Time Out of Mind by Oh Mercy in 1989, the second album from him, which is attributable to the Americana genre. Dylan blends elements of folk, rock, blues and even the country to its own style, which differs significantly from the other musicians of the genre. A striking feature of this album is a dark, almost melancholic voice already and the often strong echo with songs like Standing in the Doorway. Also, many songs were in spite of intensive work session aware improvised sound that can be heard especially at the beginning of some pieces, such as at Highlands and Dirt Road Blues.
In 1997, the Rolling Stone and Uncut tricked it as the best album of the year in their annual list. The Mojo ranked it in second place.
Background
Although the 1989 released album Oh Mercy had arrived successfully among listeners and critics and positively different from Dylan's heavily criticized albums of the 80s because of his undoubted quality, Dylan grabbed the style of the album in the direct successor Under the Red Sky is not on, but tried create a new on, which was, however, recorded negative. Then he published over seven years, no new songs more. In an interview with Paul Zollo in April 1991, he said that he seriously wondered if his songs even still wanted to hear someone, and that he had probably reached a point at which he had written enough songs. It was followed by two folk albums containing American traditionals and thus only works of foreign authors.
In the winter of 1996, he wrote then most of the time on the songs of Time Out of Mind. Included were all the tracks with producer Daniel Lanois, with whom he had already taken Oh Mercy, in Miami. However, the two albums differ stylistically from each other and are hardly to be confused despite the common genres. For this alone already makes the difference in atmosphere as well as technical details such as the use of echoes or the general exploitation.
The songs
Time Out of Mind contains eleven songs, which have an overall running time of almost 73 minutes. Thus, it was Dylan's third double LP. With two exceptions (Dirt Road Blues and Make You Feel My Love ) all songs have a life of about five minutes. In fact, the final song Highlands is of a duration of 16 minutes, the longest song Dylan has ever released. He was often viewed as a lyrical experiment and therefore, be compared with previous pieces of similar length, such as Desolation Row (on Highway 61 Revisited ) and Sad - Eyed Lady of the Lowlands ( on on Blonde Blonde ).
In addition to often very stressed blues love songs like Million Miles or Standing in the Doorway on the album also works as ambiguous Not Dark Yet to be found, which can be taken to be from her text, word for word, but still leave room for interpretation. The texts reach the usual depth and quality that you knew of Dylan already, and yet the lyrics on this album differ from earlier. So this time surreal and often grotesque passages do not appear. The only piece that could go in that direction, Highlands, when Dylan tells of an encounter with a waitress - but instead of a bizarre odyssey, as in Bob Dylan's 115th Dream ( on the album Bringing It All Back Home), develops the moment rather an everyday scenario that nevertheless something special, even if the familiar is.
Title list
Charts and Awards
The album went platinum in the U.S. and the UK, with gold and reached number 10 in both countries of the charts. In Germany it even came up in 6th place The best result was achieved in Norway # 2 on the album charts.
The positive response from fans and critics, culminating in the album was honored in 1998 at the 40th Grammy Awards with three prices. In addition to those for Album of the Year and Best Contemporary Folk Album for Dylan still received the award for the best male vocal performance in the area of rock for the song Cold Irons Bound.
2003 listed the magazine Rolling Stone Time Out of Mind in its list of the 500 best albums of all time at number 408