So It Goes 2023, Week Two

Bob Dylan remixes Time Out Of Mind, R.E.M.'s Bill Berry makes a thunderous return, Britpoppers in middle age.

Bob Dylan—Fragments: Time Out Of Mind Sessions (1996-1997)—The Bootleg Series, Vol. 17

Never the biggest fan of Time Out Of Mind, the 1997 album that amounted to a creative comeback for Bob Dylan, I had high hopes for Fragments: Time Out Of Mind Sessions (1996-1997), the seventeenth installment in his ongoing Bootleg Series. My problem with the record isn't the material, it's the production. Daniel Lanois encased the affair in a gloomy gauze which can be read as a mediation on morality, especially since Dylan had a health scare just prior to the album's release. Apparently, I'm not the only one to have issues with the production. Dylan greenlit a new mix of the album for Fragments, one that strips away much of Lanois's murk, leaving behind a record that feels like a precursor to the roadhouse blues, ballads, and boogie of Love & Theft and Modern Times. Where those records have some kick in their rhythms, Lanois favored mood over muscle so the album remains a slightly ponderous affair and so does this box set, which piles up take after take of the album's eleven songs. There are slight variations in execution and tempo, especially on "Mississippi," but no revelations and very little in the way of unheard music; the entire fifth disc previously appeared on Tell Tale Signs, the eighth volume of the Bootleg Series. Sometimes, the creative process is as circular as these sessions, which depict Dylan chasing a vibe so transient and elusive that he decided to remix his finished product, something he's never done in the past. It's interesting but only mildly: it's variations on a theme that's already known. 

Belle & Sebastian—Late Developers

Gaz Coombes—Turn the Car Around

Dave Rowntree—Radio Songs

Britpoppers entered middle age a long time ago yet there's still something disarming in hearing once exuberant rockers settling into a relaxed groove; it marks the passage of time. Not even a Supergrass reunion could knock Gaz Coombes off course. Turn the Car Around finds him returning to the mellow, mature pop he's been peddling since Matador, the 2015 album where he successfully established a distance from the group he led in the 1990s. Thankfully, Coombes adds a fair amount of texture and color to Turn the Car Around, saving it from being a repeat of the slightly sleepy World's Strongest Man. Radio Songs, the belated solo debut from Blur drummer Dave Rowntree, is also heavy on texture and color, which is appropriate for an album designed to mimic the experience of twiddling across the dial in the late hours. There are enough sing-along hooks and riffs to give Radio Songs a pulse yet it still drifts toward moodiness if not quite melancholy. Conversational and unassuming as a frontman, Rowntree sings like a drummer stepping into the spotlight after decades behind the kit; tuneful enough to carry a melody, not without charm but mainly endearing to those who already call themselves fans.

Where Rowntree busied himself with law, politics, and computer animation in the years since Britpop, Belle & Sebastian just kept going, somehow gaining momentum in recent years. Late Developers is the third album they've released since 2019. I somehow missed that they released an album last May—I'm blaming that entirely on parenting babies in a pandemic—so Late Developers plays to me as a bit of a continuation of 2015's Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance: buoyant and assured, playful in how it threads disco into its insistent pop. At this point, the group seems less like a collection of introverts—which was the prevailing notion back in the 1990s—than a bustling moveable party, one that gains momentum when new voices enter the spotlight. Their inclusive spirit is something to admire in 2023. Plus, the visual pun of the cover is funny. 

The Bad Ends—The Power and the Glory

Bill Berry, the drummer who propelled R.E.M. during their glory days and wrote a good number of their best songs, returns to action in The Bad Ends, a union with guitarist Mike Mantione of Five Eights. This could be called a supergroup if Manitone was well-known outside of Athens, Georgia but the small scale is the charm of the Bad Ends: it sounds like a bunch of old guys happy to still be able to make some noise in their garage. The Power and the Glory feels familiar in its form and execution but it's not a throwback to the jangling 1980s, not when there are so many songs about the passing of time and dead friends. It's not a gloomy record, though, not with Berry's thunderous swing, playing rhythms that kickstart muscle memories of R.E.M. at their peak. It's good to have him back.