eMusic Review
That grizzled-beyond-its-years voice, that free-tempo guitar playing, that wheezing harmonica, those political songs that stomp their targets into dust with sheer verbal overkill — Dylan was a very serious young man on his third album, combining the fiery indignation of youth with a slightly archaic, time-worn diction. (He mocked militarists in "With God On Our Side," confident that he had history on his.) The 22-year-old songwriter was already aware that he was something like the voice of a generation, too: the title track was a deliberate (and successful) attempt to create a rallying cry for the revolutionary mood of the times. "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" begins with the story of the killing of a black barmaid by a young white tobacco farmer, then expands to a rhetorically masterful indictment of the entire racist system around it; "When the Ship Comes In" rewrites one of Dylan's favorite songs, Brecht & Weill's "Pirate Jenny," into a just-you-wait threat to the foes of social change. And between the demands for justice, there's a trio of love songs — about parting, rather than reuniting. Released during the first throes of Beatlemania, The Times briefly stood as an exemplar of folk as "serious"… read more »
