There is plenty of mediocre music being sold in our stores but every once in a great while a CD will come along that manages to strike the right chord inside and makes one stop and marvel and remind us of the magic of an inspired artist.  We're not talking just a CD of well thought out and heartfelt music, we're talking the rare mixture of intimate lyrics that speak to the many while expressing the heart and soul of a sole individual or group; and of music that mixes seamlessly with the words to bring out all possible emotion.

The last time this occurred for me was with Paul Simon's Graceland which was a combination of a talented artist at the top of his craft somehow creating something that expressed my particular place in life better than I ever could.  "And I could say oo oo oo and everybody would know what I was talking about, everybody would know exactly what I was talking about." Last September with the release of Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind that experience happened once again.  Whether it wins the Grammy for best album or not, Time Out of Mind for me will forever mark the events of 1997 in a poetic way- like the difference between a photograph and a painting.

Blonde on Blonde perhaps captures Dylan's manic genius and unmatched wordplay better, while Blood on the Tracks will forever remain more popular and accessible, and Street Legal will remain the closest account of a recorded nervous breakdown, but Time Out of Mind is for me Dylan's most personal work while being both his most heartbreaking and heartstopping CD. 

"Gonna walk down that dirt road until my eyes begin to bleed, 'til there's nothing left to see, 'til the chains have been shattered and I've been freed." The overriding confusion is trying to figure out whether one wants to work things out or whether one wants to walk away.  "Lookin at my shadow, looking at the colors up above.  Rolling through the rain and hail, looking for the sunny side of love." For all the pain the singer expresses, he realizes that to be inspired through the love of another is hard to walk away from.

My current favorite song is the third track, Standing in the Doorway which initially struck me as too trite to consider one of Dylan's major efforts.  But there are several vocal moments on this track that make the listener smile and cringe at the same moment and isn't that what the best art does?  "I see nothing to be gained by any explanation, there's no words that need to be said.  You left me standin' in the doorway cryin' blues wrapped around my head." I originally thought the line, "Don't know if I saw you if I would kiss you or kill you, it probably wouldn't matter to you anyhow" seemed somewhat inappropriate in the post-OJ world, but it is one of many where the singer questions whether he misses her or whether he wishes he never had met her.  There are several "Dylan" trademark moments in the performance.  "The light in this place is so bad, making me sick in the head.  All the laughter is just making me sad.""I would be crazy if I took you back, it would go up against every rule.  You left me standin' in the doorway cryin' suffering' like a fooool." The lyrics seem simple in the best blues tradition but the way he sings "fool" and "head" prove what a great and totally original singer he still is.

"You took a part of me that I really miss." The next track Million Miles is one I haven't yet come to fully understand and appreciate.  The performance isn't quite as intense as the previous track and doesn't match the accessibility of the following track.  It portrays the crux of the problem of the relationship gone bad, "Did so many things I never did intend to do.  Well, I've tried to get closer but I'm still a million miles away from you." This being Dylan's 41st official release it amazes me that after all that time he can still write in a way that is in a totally different language than he has used before.  Gone are the cryptic, clever expressions of the soul; the lyrics on Time Out of Mind are unabashedly straightforward.  To reveal one's heart is the single most difficult thing any one of us can do, that Dylan does it so clearly and willingly here is remarkable.