Bob Dylan's career has been quite the tumultuous path of peaks and valleys. 40 years will bring your fair share of ups and downs. Dylan has been the Michael Jordan of his peers at times (Blonde On Blonde, Blood On The Tracks, countless others you can take your pick from) and also the twit at the end of the bench who holds the water bucket and jock straps (Saved and Shot Of Love for sure, but my personal favorite to loathe is the pure torture of 1988's Down In The Groove).

Modern Times finds Dylan in the threshold of another period of peaks that began back in 97' with his Album of the Year Grammy winning Time Out Of Mind and continued with 2001's wholey confident Love And Theft. Times seemingly picks right up where Love And Theft left off like a sequel of sorts with Dylan immersing himself once again in Jump-Swing and Boogie-Woogie Blues territory. Album opener "Thunder On The Mountain" is as fine as anything off of Theft, and surprisingly finds Dylan in a spry mood taking potshots at Alicia Keys of all people. Following track "Spirit On The Water" shows that beneath all of Dylan's surface of cynicism, there's a hopeless romantic just begging to emerge.

"When The Deal Goes Down" has got to be a direct influence from touring with Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard over the last few years, and "Ain't Talkin'" feels like a straight-forward descendant of "Love Sick" from Time Out Of Mind. There's only one minor gripe I have with Modern Times. This album is long. Really long. Most of these tunes are drawn out a lot longer than they need to be and Dylan might have benefited from outside production help this go-around. But who knows, maybe if Dylan would have brought a producer in, it would have disrupted the flow that it seems he and his merry band of misfits have been in for almost a decade now. Either way you look at it, Modern Times is still an excellent album, even if it is the lesser of his recent trilogy of modern works.