Dylan, and co-producer Daniel Lanois, were originally aiming for a sound that closely replicated the vinyl experience, and it could be said that they succeeded. Basically, once the before and after comparison has been done it is likely that most listeners will plump for the new mix. And the remix is more than a casual wipe-over with a clean cloth – everything is so much brighter than the previously available CD edition, Dylan’s vocal is more prominent and elements of the percussion have a fuller, rounder sound. It makes sense to pull all the previously released songs into this collection since they are part of the ‘ Time Out Of Mind‘ story. 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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