Together Through Life (2009)
1. Beyond Here Lies Nothin'
2. Life is Hard
3. My Wife's Home Town
4. If You Ever Go to Houston
5. Forgetful Heart
6. Jolene
7. This Dream of You
8. Shake Shake Mama
9. I Feel a Change Comin' On
10.It's All Good
In the grand narrative of Dylan’s improbable late-career renaissance, Together Through Life occupies a curious, slightly underappreciated niche. Released in 2009, it followed a triumvirate of towering records—Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times—each of which had solidified Dylan’s position not only as a survivor, but as a creative force capable of surprising relevance. Expectations, by this point, were astronomically high.
And yet, Together Through Life is not a misstep. It’s simply looser, more off-the-cuff, and perhaps less haunted than its immediate predecessors. If Time Out of Mind was a brooding meditation on mortality and Modern Times a cryptic almanac of American archetypes, Together Through Life is something else entirely: a flirtation with the borderlands. Musically and thematically, it slips into the dusty dance halls, smoky roadhouses, and forgotten airwaves of pre-rock Americana.
Stylistically, the album feels like a distant cousin to Love and Theft—steeped in blues, Tex-Mex rhythms, and early swing traditions. The accordion work of David Hidalgo (of Los Lobos fame) lends the entire project a regional flair, evoking the soundscape of a mythical Southwest. Dylan, ever the magpie of American musical history, lifts freely and without apology. Most notable is My Wife’s Home Town, which borrows liberally—melodically and spiritually—from Willie Dixon’s I Just Want To Make Love To You. It's not homage so much as appropriation, and whether that bothers the listener will likely depend on their tolerance for Dylan’s long-standing habit of pillaging the past.
Lyrically, the themes are straightforward and wry: love, loss, lust, and long drives. Gone are the densely layered metaphors of Dylan’s more apocalyptic recent work; in their place, we get a man in full shrug mode—content, cranky, amused. The second half of the album is particularly strong, beginning with the laid-back swing of Jolene and culminating in It’s All Good, a sardonic kiss-off that channels resignation into comic gold.
If the first half wobbles slightly (Life Is Hard, in particular, leans too heavily on its retro balladry without offering enough substance in return), the album’s brevity and cohesion ultimately rescue it. At 45 minutes, it neither overstays its welcome nor attempts to scale thematic heights it can’t reach. What it does offer is a snapshot of Dylan in motion—still shifting, still searching, still game.
Had Together Through Life been released in the early ’90s, during Dylan’s wilderness years, it might well have been hailed as a bold return to form. In 2009, surrounded by the shadow of recent triumphs, it inevitably feels like a minor entry. But even a minor Dylan record in this era is a significant event, and Together Through Life, with its dusty textures and sly humor, remains a worthy chapter in the long, strange book of Dylan’s career.
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