Bob Dylan’s 33rd studio album, and currently his most recent collection of original songs, was 2009’s Together Through Life. After the five year span between Love and Theft and Modern Times, a wait of less than three years for this CD was welcome. And the album came as a surprise, announced in the media just a month or two before its release.

Together Through Life can be viewed as the completion of a trilogy that began with Love and Theft, as the three albums share a producer (Dylan himself, under his Jack Frost pseudonym) and a general vibe and attitude. Time Out Of Mind, his other brilliant release of the past dozen years, stands apart from these three though it marked his creative resurgence.

Of the trilogy, Together Through Life is the least ambitious, though I don’t mean that as a criticism. This is a more laid-back and casual release than the previous two and that’s part of its charm. That said, many of these songs are lyrically dark. The record is full of “struggling love songs,” as Dylan put it.

The song that kick-started the project is ‘Life is Hard,’ a gentle, mournful ballad written for a film soundtrack. Sample lyric: “Since we’ve been out of touch, I haven’t felt that much from day to barren day. My heart stays locked away. I walk the boulevard, admitting life is hard without you near me.”

Today’s song, ‘This Dream Of You,’ is another example of that lovely heartbreak. I’ll write more about the musical style of Together Through Life in tomorrow’s post, but I can’t help but point out the wonderful accordion work of David Hidalgo (of Los Lobos) on this track.