stronger walls than yours

I hear Bob Dylan's new album has a song about John Lennon on it, called "Roll On John."

In September 17 TIME, Eric Pooley wrote,

--------------------- It was a delicious coincidence that songs from Bob Dylan's new record began flying around the Internet in the days between the two national political conventions.  You couldn't ask for a better remedy for such empty-chair posturing than a stiff dose of Tempest, Dylan's 35th studio album, set for release Sept. 11 -- 50 1/2 years after his first.

...Dylan doesn't write anthems anymore.  He writes fever dreams.  "Narrow Way"...contains what may be the only topical political reference on the album -- and it hails from 1814.  ("Ever since the British burned the White House down / There's a bleeding wound in the heart of town.")  And yet, like every other song on Tempest, "Narrow Way" has plenty to say about 2012:

This is hard country to stay alive in
Blades are everywhere, and they're breaking my skin...
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you
You'll surely have to work down to me someday

This is the method to Dylan's septuagenarian magic.  With his skintight road band (joined by Los Lobos multi-instrumentalist David Hidalgo) repeating a simple hypnotic riff, he matches his original verses to a chorus filched from "You'll Work down to Me Someday," a 1934 song by the Mississippi Sheiks, and comes up with bloody gold.

It's the method that saved his career.  A half-century ago, young Bob found his muse by turning his back on the news of the world and digging into chilling folk songs from a disappearing America.

And after he reached his creative nadir 25 years ago, middle-aged Bob revived his muse in the 1990s by returning to those songs.  He recorded two albums full of them, then wrote a set of great new ones -- built from shards of the old folk blues -- that became his comeback record, Time Out of Mind.  Playing roughly 100 nights a year in his traveling medicine show, old Bob honed a crack road band and used it to produce the most remarkable string of late-career records in rock history:  Love and Theft, Modern Times, Together Through Life and now Tempest.

...What sets Tempest apart is good humor.  Dylan picks his way through the carnage with a jaunty step to balance his jaundiced eye.  In "Soon After Midnight," a floaty rumination that recalls 1997's "Not Dark Yet," he coaxes a Louis Armstrong croon from his blown-loudspeaker voice and declares:

My heart is cheerful, it's never fearful
I've been down on the killing floors
I'm in no great hurry, I'm not afraid of your fury
I've faced stronger walls than yours

{end TIME excerpt}--------------------------------------
I like the part at the beginning of the article, with "empty-chair posturing," and I like how the author calls this new collection of songs a "record" though when we go looking for it, it'll surely be in CD-form....

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