Dylan's Voice

Bob Dylan is releasing his 800th album this week, and the anticipation has fueled a brief round of Dylan revisiting for me over the last few days, most notably Nashville Skyline and Tell Tale Signs. One of the most remarkable aspects, at least to me, of Dylan's career arc is his voice. Not the "voice of a generation," but his voice, literally. In 1969's Skyline, Dylan's voice was of course, youthful, a bit nasally, and seemed fresh with ideas and lyrics that were well ahead of their time. In Signs--a bootleg round-up of his most recent works--his voice is gnarled, almost corpse-like, and yet, still seems ahead of the curve by leaps and bounds. His voice is, and has always been, his ultimate vehicle for delivering his unique prose, and although old age and death are slowly creeping up on him physically, they can't touch what's in his mind. "Prolific" can't begin to describe what he's done--or has yet to do--artistically.