One of the more underrated albums from Bob Dylan‘s studio dabblings, Together Through Life has not yet received the hindsight praise it deserves. It has fallen down the crack of the discography-shaped couch. Together Through Life Live hopes to profile these songs from the stage, where they were inevitably set to feature alongside hits. The promise there is in playing songs everyone knows, you can bolster contemporary material and have it shine just as brightly, like how standing next to a radiator will get you warmer. Heat-stealing Together Through Life songs featured on this compilation of live efforts are a treat for those who love the complexities and blues of the 2009 album release. For those who are yet to fix their broken hearts, who are not quite on board the praise train for Together Through Life, opportunity has presented itself with Together Through Life Live.
What is there to do when we reach the end of our road? That is what Together Through Life looks to find. A collaboration with Grateful Dead member Robert Hunter forms here. Songs of love, songs relating to the Olivier Dahan feature, My Own Love Song. Though the tracks Dylan and Hunter wrote took on a life of their own, the direction does not become crystal clear until hearing these songs of the road taken out on tour. Those blues-like features, the natural range of instrumental thrills heard on Beyond Here Lies Nothin‘, a striking song with mockeries of the outcast Ovid enforcing its homeliness. Nothing lies beyond family, beyond faith or love. Dylan and Hunter return to those topics time and again on these songs, and adapting them to the stage means giving them a little kick more in the instrumentals. Easily done, especially given the strength of musicians Dylan has kept company with for the last two decades.
Some tracks were never played live, with Life is Hard and Shake Mama Shake sadly missing from this compilation. It does not derail the strengths of this compilation, though, which features some fantastic performances from Dylan. His gruffer voice is an enduringly sweet part of these live showcases – more because it seasons the life lessons heard throughout Together Through Life than anything else. Roaring, love-filled lyrics lead the way for these performances though the percussion for My Wife’s Home Town is staggering. A few moments for the guitar to shine throughout can be heard towards the end before we are dragged along to Dublin, Ireland, for If You Ever Go to Houston. Later performances featured in the set, particularly This Dream of You, stands as one of the finest from Dylan during this period. Shadows, former flames, and the recollections of the past all come to a head, but in a fresh context.
What Dylan finds with these live performances is not a chance to revisit memory but an opportunity to appreciate the life lived together with those who stuck around. Those depths come not from the audience, which Dylan has conditioned in the same structure as a Pavlovian experiment to whoop anytime a harmonica appears on stage, but through one of his most underrated albums being expressed so clearly, beautifully, on stage. Crucial to Together Through Life is not fearing the change. Embrace it. I Feel a Change Coming On and It’s All Good are not just telling us this in name alone. There is a brilliant part of Dylan and Hunter’s work here, working off the fumes of My Own Love Song, where the dying breaths and parting of knowledge to a new generation are delivered with confidence and clarity.
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