It’d be tempting to view this package with a jaded eye – a remix of an album one already has, a disc worth of previously released material ( which one already has…) – but that would be a mistake. This review is based on a digital delivery of the full release with the liner notes provided as text only – the full release will be more sumptuous and includes rare photographs in a glossy booklet (and hopefully better than the cover image…). The full release’s breakdown is – Disc 1: new remix of ‘ Time Out Of Mind‘, Discs 2 and 3 are alternate takes and outtakes from the sessions, Disc 4 consists of live tracks, all but one previously unreleased, and Disc 5 is made up of studio outtakes and contemporary live versions, all of which was previously available on Bootleg Series Volume 8. The full version is 5CDs or 10LPs, and there is a 2 CD or 4LP release that will take CD1 of the full set and a cherry-picked release of 12 alternate takes. This release will be available – as is usually the case with the Bootleg series – in multiple formats and has an unusually complicated structure. It was an album that brooded on mortality, with ‘ Not Dark Yet‘ the exemplar of that strand but also wrestled with love from the pained ‘ Love Sick’ to the somewhat cloying ‘ Make You Feel My Love.’ There’s an element of reflection on a past world that has not quite actually fallen into history, and of course there’s the enigmatic strangeness of ‘ Highlands‘ and its bizarre encounter with an argumentative waitress. And then ‘ Time Out Of Mind‘ revealed that Dylan the writer was back, and with a new voice we hadn’t yet heard. Good as the folk song albums are, at the time there was a fear, especially after the second one appeared, that this might be it, this might be what we get from Dylan from here on in. There had been a time when it looked as if Dylan might have permanently retreated into the folk music of his youth – there had been two albums prior to this release ‘ Good As I Been To You‘ and ‘ World Gone Wrong‘ which focused on such material. ‘ Time Out Of Mind’ is a landmark Dylan album, not only was it successful and widely lauded and heaped with awards it was also, far more importantly, a return to Dylan recording new songs written by Dylan. Landmark album remastered and the path to the recording beautifully laid out.
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