Time tends to reduce great artistry to caricature.

Bob Dylan -- wasn’t he a protest singer? The voice of a generation? The guy who provided the soundtrack for world peace and civil rights by writing “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They are A-Changin’ ”?

And what about Robert Johnson? Didn’t he sell his soul to the devil? At some dark crossroads in Mississippi? And then he invented the modern blues?

But Dylan wrote only a handful of protest songs, quickly realizing they were an artistic dead-end, and Johnson never had any documented meetings with Beelzebub. With Johnson’s 100th anniversary arriving Sunday, and Dylan’s 70th birthday on May 24, it’s time to take a fresh look. Myths aren’t why the music of these two artists still has the ability to bowl over listeners who encounter it for the first time. There’s something else, but what exactly?

2 stars (out of 4)

Steve Earle’s latest album, “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive” (New West), shares a title with a historical novel he was writing (to be published in May) and the last single Hank Williams wrote in his brief lifetime. Most of these 11 songs share Williams’ sense of mortality and try to glimpse at the world beyond the one we see. The performances are mostly stripped-down country-folk tunes, outfitted with sighing pedal steel and fiddle under the direction of producer T Bone Burnett. At times it feels like a period exercise, Earle and his accomplices evoking a hoedown in need only of a few hay bales (“Little Emperor”), ancient troubadours jamming around the Maypole (“Molly-O”), and over-served saloon denizens leading a jaunty sing-along (“Gulf of Mexico”). A few specific references to modern events are sprinkled throughout, but mostly Earle sings in unusually hazy generalities or clichés (“Every Part of Me,” “Lonely are the Free”). The tepid music doesn’t help, with only the distorted vocal and blues harmonica on “Meet Me in the Alleyway” disrupting the rocking-chair flow. Maybe working on a novel distracted Earle, but the feisty dust-kicker of old appears to have taken this one off.

greg@gregkot.com

3.5 stars (out of 4)

The Feelies are famous for moving at their own, ultra-deliberate pace in a career that has yielded a mere four studio albums since the late ‘70s, and none since 1991. So it’s appropriate that the New Jersey quintet begins album No. 5, “Here Before” (Bar/None), with a knowing wink.

“Is it too late to do it again?/Or should we wait another 10,” Glenn Mercer sings, and then time melts away as the band slips into one of its patented trance-grooves, as if it were surfing atop a wave of guitars and drums rather than playing them.

Mercer, Bill Million, Dave Weckerman, Stanley Demeski and Brenda Sauter remain resolute minimalists, playing only what each song requires and nothing more. The building blocks of the band’s sound are as stout as ever: Million’s driving rhythm guitar, Sauter’s melody-gorged bass, Mercer’s deadpan vocals and guitar solos that alternately sing and drone. Weckerman’s array of percussion ornaments Demeski’s relentless, subway-train drumming in a way that sets the Feelies apart from virtually every other post-punk, post-new wave band to emerge from the late ‘70s New York/New Jersey scene.

The lovely twilight chime of “So Far” and “Bluer Skies,” the tumbling ferocity of “Time is Right” and “When You Know,” the mesmerizing glide of “Change Your Mind” -- the Feelies evoke their past without imitating it, balancing the pastoral, folk-based melodies of “The Good Earth” (1986) with the pinballing overdrive of their last album, “Time for a Witness,” released 20 years ago.

“Is it too late to do it again?” Clearly not.

greg@gregkot.com

Low: The Duluth, Minn., trio returns with its first album in four years, a typically lovely yet somehow disturbing exercise in restraint, “C’mon” (Sub Pop), 9 p.m. Thursday at Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln Av., $15 ($18 at door); lincolnhallchicago.com.

greg@gregkot.com

TV on the Radio bassist Gerard Smith died Wednesday of lung cancer, the band announced on its Web site.

“We will miss him terribly,” the band said, and announced the cancellation of five shows, including Friday’s scheduled appearance at Metro. Also canceled were shows Wednesday in Detroit, Saturday and Sunday in Minneapolis, and Tuesday in Denver.

Smith had not been touring with the band in recent weeks. He was diagnosed with lung cancer after the band completed its latest album, “Nine Types of Light.” He  joined the band in 2005 and played on their albums "Return to Cookie Mountain" (2006) and  "Dear Science" (2008), contributing guitars, keyboards and backing vocals in addition to bass.

greg@gregkot.com

Parts and Labor: Turbulent drumming, whirly-gig keyboards and anthemic melodies continue to define this excellent Brooklyn-based trio on its latest album, “Constant Future” (Jagjaguwar), 9:30 p.m. Wednesday at Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $8; ticketweb.com.

greg@gregkot.com

Eleventh Dream Day records at a leisurely pace – producing an album once every five years or so. But it’s not like anybody’s slacking off. Day jobs, families, numerous other recording projects and bands – Rick Rizzo, Janet Bean, Doug McCombs and Mark Greenberg don’t have much down time. So whenever their schedules align and Eleventh Dream Day reconvenes, they’re in sprinter’s mode. That was especially true of “Riot Now!” (Thrill Jockey), the latest album in a career that stretches back to the early ‘80s.

It was recorded in two days, mostly first takes, after the Chicago band had honed the songs during a residency at the Hideout. The sound is appropriately violent and unruly, Bean’s drums rolling and tumbling around McCombs’ strident bass lines and Rizzo’s sheets-of-sound guitar, while Greenberg’s keyboards spackle the cracks in the arrangements with drone.

 “I’ve been playing with a Les Paul (guitar) and Super Reverb, and if you turn it up to ‘10’ in the studio and let it rip, it sounds really great,” Rizzo says of a guitar tone that echoes the mayhem he routinely raised on stages in the early days of the band. “We’re getting ready to play a show and I realized I had ripped a speaker. My amp couldn’t take it anymore. We go away for awhile, but everytime we get together the band just finds that place automatically. The amazing part is Janet’s drumming. She doesn’t rehearse and then she comes in there and plays like she does.”

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Recorded in hotels on ring-leader Damon Albarn’s iPad while Gorillaz toured North America last year, “The Fall” (Virgin/EMI) was originally made available only to fan-club members, but now receives its official release. In comparison to the three previous Gorillaz albums, laden with guest stars and ambitious production, this comes across as a far more modest affair, with its bedroom beats, gentle guitars, purring keyboards and wistful vocals. A sinister vibe burrows into the buzzing foundation of “The Snake in Dallas,” but most of the 15 tracks come off as a dreamy travelogue – America as seen from the window of a tour bus. In keeping with the album’s sparse tone, the star turns are reduced to a bare minimum – the Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon add a bit of guitar and bass, and Bobby Womack sings the folk-soul lament “Bobby in Phoenix.” Mostly, this is Albarn making one for the headphone-obsessed in his fan base, a soundtrack for kicking back in the back seat and watching the world drift past.

greg@gregkot.com

3.5 stars (out of 4)

After the home-made, decidedly low-fi charms of her 2009 debut album, “Bird-Brains” – recorded on a Dictaphone – Merrill Garbus ups the ante on the follow-up. Whereas its predecessor was quirky and small, “Whokill” (4AD) is quirky and expansive; an offbeat personal statement that frequently morphs into a killer dance album.

Garbus adds not only a bassist and songwriting partner, Nate Brenner, but a horn section to flesh out her one-woman-band: strumming a ukulele, pounding drums, layering and looping her voice into a choir. Garbus’ one-of-a-kind voice is a thrilling, go-for-broke instrument, an uninhibited cry of joy and vulnerability. It rides a wave of polyrhythmic percussion – everything from tribal drums to what sound like ticking alarm clocks and clattering pots and pans.

“I need you to press me down before my body flies away from me,” she demands on “Powa,” a literal translation of just how uplifting and transformative the sound of this music can be. For all its eccentric details and occasionally fractured flow, the songs brim with ecstatic blasts of saxophone and undulating waves of rhythm that suggest Afro-pop’s endless groove.

greg@gregkot.com

Wax Trax! Records Retrospectacle -- 33 1/3 Year Anniversary: Time to break out the jack boots and bomber jackets, the label that put “industrial” on the musical map is back for a celebration of its late founders, Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher, with proceeds going to charity. Among the former Wax Trax bands and artists scheduled to play are Front 242, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, Rights of the Accused, Luc Van Acker, Ministry’s Paul Barker and Chris Connelly, 8 p.m. Friday-Sunday at Metro, 3730 N. Clark St., Friday-Saturday sold out, $41 or $350 VIP table for Sunday (at time of publication); etix.com.

Mike Watt: The bass-playing, Popeye-cheeked epitome of all that is good and righteous about indie-rock will headline a doubleheader. He’ll host a showing of the documentary “We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen,” about his first great band, then perform with his current trio, the Missingmen, focusing on the terse punk blurt of its latest release, “Hyphenated-Man” (Clenched Wrench), 7 p.m. Friday, “We Jam Econo,” $10; and 10 p.m. Friday, Watt and the Missingmen, $15, both at Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, schubas.com.  

greg@gregkot.com