Bob Dylan's back, and 'It's All Good'

In a May 2, 1975, article in the Daily Inter Lake, Bob Dylan was quoted as saying, "It's hard to find a frontier," meaning it was hard to write relevant, topical songs because the times they were a-changin' too quickly to get a bead on them.

"From day to day, they're just rolling over too fast to keep your eye on," Dylan told singer Mary Travers, who was one of the original folkies as one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary.

If Dylan felt that way 34 years ago, just imagine how he must feel today in the midst of the Internet babble and the cause du jour on cable television. Thus, it's no surprise that for the past few decades, Bob Dylan has concentrated on the typical instead of the topical. Rather than tell America and the world where to go - in either a positive or negative sense - he has focused instead on where we are and what we are.

Everyday life is the canvas of his mature art, and in Dylan's eyes, everyday life is wondrous strange. At least, that's the impression you get wandering through the side streets and boulevards with Dylan on "Together Through Life," his newest studio album and one of his most readily accessible ever.

Reading the lyrics of a recent Dylan song is like catching up with the family gossip. Take the bitterly enthusiastic lament of "I just wanna say that Hell's my wife's home town." I suspect that may be the EX-wife based on the description that follows: "She can make things bad/ she can make things worse/ she's got stuff more potent than a gypsy curse." Dylan's throaty delivery of those lyrics over the jaunty accordion of David Hidalgo (from Los Lobos' and the bluesy guitar of Heartbreaker Mike Campbell turns the song into a chortling sendup of every nightmare romance since the beginning of time.

All but one of these 10 new songs were co-written by Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, who also co-wrote the infectiously simple "Silvio," which has become something of a concert staple for Dylan. Hunter's influence probably accounts for the lighter tone than on the so-called "trilogy" of blues-based albums that began with "Time Out of Mind" in 1997.

Nonetheless, there is a seriousness of purpose on the new album that is consistent with all of Dylan's later work. It marries the eschatological concerns of Dylan's Christian period with the ascetically simple lyricism of "John Wesley Harding" and delivers the punch of the best of American roots music.

Probably the shining example of Dylan's mastery of irony comes on the album's final song, "It's All Good," which is a brilliantly ambiguous paean to the complexity of the world.

"Big politician telling lies. Restaurant kitchen all full of flies.

Don't make a bit of difference; don't see why it should.

But it's all right, cause it's all good…

Wives are leaving their husbands; they're beginning to roam.

They leave the party and they never get home.

I wouldn't change it … even if I could.

You know what they say, man, it's all good."

It sounds at first like a condemnation of both God and man, and how many times have we all looked around at this world full of misery and mayhem and lamented like Jeremiah, the "broken-hearted prophet" of the Old Testament.

How easy it is to contrast the sadness of this world with simple-minded joy, and conclude that happy people are idiots, but Dylan challenges us to consider the alternative when he concludes, "I wouldn't change a thing even if I could."

It reminds me of Paul's reassurance in his Epistle to the Romans: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose."

That is a "hard saying" for those who can only look at the surface of life and don't catch the beauty underlying everything, but Bob Dylan doesn't look at the surface; never has. Like every real artist - from the cavemen at Lascaux to the post-modern scribblers like T.S. Eliot to the down-home Chicago bluesmen like Willie Dixon and Howlin' Wolf - he "brings it all back home" from a deeper place, a place where God lives.

And as far as this one critic is concerned, "It's all good."

n Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com