Bob Dylan - Rough and Rowdy Ways

Pitchfork 90

Six decades into his career, Bob Dylan delivers a gorgeous and meticulous record. It is the rare Dylan album that asks to be understood and comes down to meet its audience.

The Guardian 80

(Columbia)

Dylan’s erudite new album contains multitudes. Is it a last boomer hurrah?

Greatness is often contested territory. Rough and Rowdy Ways, Bob Dylan’s 39th studio album, is awash with pre-eminence, both in its actual and its more unstable forms.

“I’m the first among equals, second to none,” harrumphs Dylan mischievously on False Prophet, one of three excellent songs that trailed this album. A roguish twinkle in his eye, Dylan is very much flirting with his own status as the marquee bard of the 20th century here, the kind of guy who can’t quite break the internet, but just slow it down a mite when he puts out a new song.

When women’s names appear, very often they are the fictional creations of men: Mary Lou, Miss Pearl

Related: Bob Dylan: where to start in his back catalogue

The Guardian 0

Full of bleak and brooding rhythm and blues, Rough and Rowdy Ways reveals Dylan at his lyrical best

In recent weeks, musicians have come up with an impressive variety of ways to keep their fans amused during lockdown. There have been online listening parties and Q&As, free guitar lessons via Instagram, live performances beamed direct from bedrooms, DJ sets and kitchen discos. But no artist has risen to the task of keeping their audience occupied quite like Bob Dylan. A crowdpleaser only insofar as the crowd he attracts would be pleased whatever he did – a significant proportion of his latter-day audience are so partisan you get the feeling they’d be sent into paroxysms of ecstasy if he stood on stage with a comb and paper for two hours – it goes without saying that his approach hasn’t involved any kind of chummy online interaction: he simply released three new songs. An artist who’s quite literally said nothing new for the last eight years (his last three albums have been comprised entirely of covers from the Great American Songbook, the rest of his release schedule made up of archival recordings), he suddenly turned very loquacious indeed, unleashing a series of dense, allusive tracks packed with thorny references to art, literature and pop culture.

Related: Bob Dylan's 50 greatest songs – ranked!

Related: Bob Dylan: where to start in his back catalogue