Bob Dylan - Together Through Life CD Track List Track List 1  Track List 2  Together Through Life (2009) 1. Beyond Here Lies Nothin' 2. Life Is Hard 3. My Wife's Home Town 4. If You Ever Go To Houston 5. Forgetful Heart 6. Jolene 7. This Dream Of You 8. Shake Shake Mama 9. I Feel A Change Comin' On 10. It's All Good © Columbia Records Originally Released April 28, AMG EXPERT REVIEW: 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, 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 al ive 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 themat ic 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 so journ 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 pa st, 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" i nto 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: 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 Amazon.com Product Description Deluxe: Special 2CD/DVD limited edition package in a jewel box with slipcase includes: - Together Through Life collectible poster \ n- Together Through Life sticker - Bonus CD of Bob Dylan's 60-minute Theme Time Radio Hour "Friends & Neighbors" episode - DVD of "Roy Silver -- The Lost Interview" Together Though Life, produced by Jack Frost, was prompted by the compositio n of a new song, "Life Is Hard," which was written for a forthcoming film by French director Oliver Dahan (La Vie En Rose). Bob Dylan's latest studio album was recorded late last year and features 10 new songs including "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" an d "It's All Good." This will be the 46th release from Dylan, following his Platinum album Modern Times which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 chart in 2006. Half.com Album Notes After two decades of outsourcing the producing and arrangi ng of his records to everyone from Mark Knopfler to Daniel Lanois, Bob Dylan stopped phoning it in in the '00s and began directly shaping their sound and feel. As producer of TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE, he elevates the near-cliche material with a beautif ully crafted latticework of breathy border-town accordion and smoky guitar riffs (courtesy of Los Lobos's David Hidalgo and Heartbreaker Mike Campbell respectively), steel guitar, mandolin, and brushed drums. Initially intended as a soundtrack of an Olivier Drahan movie, the album finds a pleasantly off-hand bard building on the wistful romanticism of recent ballads (like MODERN TIMES's "Beyond the Horizon") with a cycle of songs (nine of them co-written with legendary Dead lyricist Robert Hun ter) about dreaming, hoping, and good love. Indeed, the change in "I Feel A Change Comin' On" is not of the apocalyptic hard rain variety, but portends a potential tryst as Dylan chimes "life is for love" with uncharacteristic sweetness. Via languid slow burns ("Forgetful Heart"), sensual grooves ("If You Ever Go To Houston"), and loping blues walkarounds ("Jolene"), TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE plays like a great date night in a Texas dancehall--perfect for lovers tired of talking, who just want to grab hold and sway. Industry Reviews 4 stars out of 5 -- Rather than the sophisticated country-jazz of MODERN TIMES, here's a raw rock'n'roll cacophany with a Cajun twist, Los Lobos' David Higaldo driving virtually every song with his accordion. 3 stars out of 5 -- [I]ts musical touchstone is his radio programme, 'Theme Time Radio Hour.' As on the show, here he's reconnecting with the uncluttered blues-based music he grew up with, the music he loves. TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE resides in that sepia-toned world; the biggest flourish is the omnipresent accordion, courtesy of Los Lobos' David Hidalgo, which only adds to the air of dusty antiquity. 5 stars out of 5 -- [A] strikingly simple -- and strikingly excellent new album....He revels in how banged-up and gruff his voice is with a lifetime of road dust corroding his lungs. ROLLING STONE REVIEW Bob Dylan has sung in many voices on his records: the nasal-braying alarm of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"; the acidic dismiss al in "Like a Rolling Stone"; the country hermit on The Basement Tapes; the grizzly wisecracking drifter on 2001's Love and Theft and 2006's Modern Times. But Dylan, who turns 68 in May, has never sounded as ravaged, pissed off and lusty, all at onc e, as he does on Together Through Life. It is a murky-sounding, often perplexing record. The lyrics seem dashed off in spots, like first drafts, while the performances -- by Dylan's current touring band -- feel like head arrangements caught on the r un between Never Ending Tour dates. But there is a grim magnetism coursing through these 10 new songs -- and most of it is in Dylan's vividly battered singing. The shock of his voice comes right away. Dylan starts the record as if he's at a loss for words. "I love you, pretty baby/You're the only love I've ever known/Just as long as you stay with me/The whole world is my throne," he sings in the muddy samba "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'." It is a plain, unpromising opening, except for the deliv ery: a deep, exhausted rasp that sounds like the singer has been beaten to a pulp, then left for dead at the side of the road. When Dylan gets to the title punch line in each verse, he grumbles it with an audible sneer. As far as he can tell, there isn't much world left to sit on. Dylan's throat has never been anyone's idea of clear and soaring. But as a young folk singer, he strained to sound older and more sorely tested than he was, as if he had known Charley Patton, A.P. Carter and the G reat Depression firsthand. He's finally there, with an authentically pitted instrument ideally suited to the devastated settings of these songs and the rusted desert-shed production (by Dylan under his usual pseudonym, Jack Frost): brushed-snare str olls and bar-band shuffles; bag-of-snakes guitars, with frequent stinging fills by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; the rippled sigh and mocking laugh of an accordion icing most songs, played by David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. Compared to the Western-swing-like buoyance of Love and Theft and the Fifties-Chess-session air of Modern Times, this record sounds like it was cut in the dead-end Mexican border town in Orson Welles' 1958 film noir, Touch of Evil, especially when Dylan gets to lines like the closing few in "Forgetful Heart," a musky blend of banjo, dirty guitar and utter emotional defeat: "All night long/I lay awake and listen to the sound of pain/The door has closed forevermore/If indeed there ever was a door." Th at hardened, bleating voice is also perfect for these times: A nation drunk on hope less than six months ago now drowns in red ink and pink slips. "Some people they tell me/I got the blood of the land in my voice," Dylan cracks in the Nashville Skyl ine-style sway of "I Feel a Change Comin' On." But the country in these songs is running on fumes, into brick walls. "State gone broke/The county's dry/Don't be looking at me with that evil eye," Dylan snaps in the Chicago-blues lark "My Wife's Home Town," spitting the lines like a CNN news ticker. (The name of that town, according to Dylan: Hell.) "Shake Shake Mama," a string of comic come-ons with a Louisiana juke-dance gait, ends not with scoring but dire warning: "If you're goin' on home, better go the shortest way." There is another line worth noting in "I Feel a Change Comin' On" -- "You are as whorish as ever" -- and Dylan growls it like a compliment. Together Through Life is, in a surprisingly direct way, about the only thing you can count on when you're surrounded by clowns, thieves and government (sometimes all the same thing) and what happens when you lose -- or throw away -- your good thing. In the slow hurt of "Life Is Hard," Dylan bites down gently on each syllable , over soft-shoe drums and weeping pedal steel ("My dreams are locked and barred/Ad-mit-ting life is hard/With-out you near me"). And regret doesn't get much better than his strict instructions in the final verse of "If You Ever Go to Houston," a Do ug Sahm-like shot of norteño R&B: "Find the barrooms I got lost in/And send my memories home/Put my tears in a bottle/Screw the top on tight." Ultimately, Together Through Life is a mixed bag of this decade's Dylan -- impulsive, caustic, sentime ntal, long done with the contrived details of contemporary record-making. The album may lack the instant-classic aura of Love and Theft or Modern Times, but it is rich in striking moments, set in a willful rawness, and comes with a wicked finish. "I t's All Good" is a bayou-John Lee Hooker boogie that opens with bad shit ("Big politician telling lies/Restaurant kitchen, all full of flies/Don't make a bit of difference") and just gets worse ("Brick by brick, they tear you down/A teacup of water is enough to drown"). It's a portrait of an ugly America, devolving into bare-knuckle Darwinism -- survival of the coldest and cruelest -- and Dylan rubs your face in it. "It's all good," he sings repeatedly with a cruel shrug in that voice, knowing damn well it's not. But Dylan is just as sure, in nearly every other song here, that there is strength in numbers -- and that number is two. (Posted: Apr 13,) -- DAVID FRICKE Track lists are from a 3rd party source. Items below can and will differ.

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BOB DYLAN

Together Through Life (180 Gram Vinyl) Uk Ltd 10 Track Original Double Lp Still Sealed P/s (88697438931) Uk, 88697438931

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Bob Dylan

Together Through Life 1. Beyond Here Lies Nothing // 2. Life Is Hard // 3. My Wife's Home Town // 4. If You Ever Go To ...

2LP

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$35.09

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Bob Dylan

Together Through Life Sony, 88697438931

2LP

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$62.57

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Dylan,Bob

Together Through Life (lp+cd) Dylan, Bob - Together Through Life (lp+cd),lp X 2 + Cd,condition Media: New (sealed),condition Co...

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Together Through Life (2lp+cd) Usually Shipped After 2 Business Days. Number Of Media (discs, Tapes, Records…): 2. Usa, Sony, 43... Special Order

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Together Through Life Bob Dylan Together Through Life (2009 Uk Limited Edition 10-track 2-lp Set Pressed On 180gram V...

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Together Through Life (us Edition) Pressed On 180g + Contains The Entire Album On Cd Usa, Columbia 88697 43893-1, 2009

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