If the film I’m Not There says anything at all, it’s that Bob Dylan is a man who is constantly wrestling with his identity. Freewheelin’ showed a Dylan who, despite his numerous social concerns and accusations, wasn’t jaded by them, and faced the terrors of life with a wry smirk and a girl on his arm. But three of the thirteen songs in particular were lifted from the lucid post-apocalyptic improvisations and ballads to badge Dylan as the spokesman of the anti-war/civil rights/anti-establishment movement. And as reluctantly as history tells Bob Dylan accepting that role, it’s often neglected that he wrote an entire album that fully embraced the role of Protest Singer Laureate.

In fact, his protests often seem to overshadow everything else here, like on With God On Our Side and Only A Pawn In Their Game, where his fingers seem too busy pointing to play the guitar in consistent tempo. And while Freewheelin’ often found Dylan experimenting with different rhythms and formats, most of the tunes on The Times are variations on the same musical format, with lyrical themes that range from protesting against war to protesting against racism, to calling people to stop war and treat all people equally. There are a couple finger-picked ballads, which recall similar tunes on Freewheelin’, but they are neatly between protest songs like an afterthought. But the sloppy playing and single-mic production give the record a charming raggedness that aids the emphasis on Dylan’s lyrics. And while those lyrics may have, at their time, been incredibly relevant and contemporary, they tie The Times more firmly to its past than Freewheelin’, leaving it with more importance as a cultural artifact than a piece of music.