(***½) June 19, 2020. 39th Studio Album.
The most-recent Dylan album and his first new material in more than eight years, Rough and Rowdy Ways provides a musicality that has been missing in many of his albums from the latter part of his career. While still somber and introspective in a few more places than I would prefer, songs such as “False Prophet” and particularly “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” sound like they could have been recorded during the Blonde on Blonde sessions of the mid-1960s. Lyrically all of the album’s songs are direct yet mystical, and can be interpreted in many different ways. Dylan’s vitriol and humor are in full play, along with a vocal delivery that is biting in many cases. “I Contain Multitudes,” the opening track, seems to be an extremely autobiographical number, but also leaves much to the imagination as well. The double-CD and vinyl releases can really be taken as two separate albums, with the final disc and vinyl side being “Murder Most Foul,” a 17-minute bizarre epic focusing on the JFK assassination and the social, cultural and political fallout surrounding and stemming from that infamous day in American history. If this ends up being the last new Dylan album, he will have gone out on an enigmatic high, as mysterious and beguiling as ever.