In 2023, Bob Dylan continues to delve into his archives and releases the 17th instalment of his bootleg record collection, dedicated to his album Time Out Of Mind, with which he celebrated his big and more dark comeback of the 90s. The original album had eleven tracks, and this more anthology than fragmentary version has sixty. Of course, not everything is essential, and some nuances will escape first-year Dylanology students. Those who have already completed their studies will appreciate the new mix of the original album, which has been stripped of some fuzzy production effects that Daniel Lanois suggested at the time to recapture the sound of the band as it sounded live. This decision allows Dylan's Vocals a little rougher again, but is a little too quick to call into question the subtleties of Lanois' Lanois''s work...
The second and third CDs are where the action really begins, containing a mixture of beautiful demos before the official recording, alternative versions, and five songs that were not selected for Time Out Of Mind, (Mississippi made it to the next album Love And Theft). The next CD features the live sound of Time Out Of Mind from 1998 to 2001. The band is the same as in the studio and performs well, but the sound quality can be likened to as if you were listening to the songs from the bar in the back of the hall. As a qualitative but not exclusive bonus, the fifth CD includes twelve live and studio tracks that were already released on Tell Tale Signs, the eighth instalment of the Bootleg Series, in 2008. Instead of this dizzying time loop where you can hear already released rarities again, it's better to take a closer look at the first three chapters of this collection, a zigzag through a dim Americana that brought Dylan back into the light at the time.
