Confession: I haven't really kept up with Bob Dylan. Blood on the Tracks, Blonde on Blonde, that live album he did with the band, John Wesley Harding. I've never heard Love and Theft or the much celebrated "return to form" that was Time Out of Mind, or anything after 1979's Slow Train Coming for that matter. So, and here is the confession, the only reason that I listened to "When the Deal Goes Down" is because I found out that Scarlett Johansson is in the video and I think she's dreamy.

The song itself is…well, it's Dylan. It's not one of his masterworks, nor one of his stinkers, but still a better tune than most contemporaries could dream of writing. Schoolboy-like crushes aside, the video takes the track to an entirely different level though (as a great video should).

"When The Deal Goes Down" looks back on a love affair that unfolded over decades past, recollected with both fondness and regret, with poignant lines like, "I laugh and I cry and I'm haunted by/Things I never meant nor wished to say." It seems effortless -- that is, for Bob Dylan. And maybe that's the weakness of this piece. The end product is a pretty little tune, but as the twinkling instrumentation waltzes in the distance, Bob's famous, gravely croon seems bereft of any true passion. It's the accompanying video that drives the song from detachment to gorgeously dim reflection.

Set up to look like it was shot in the '50s, the camera work is home-video style, with the end product treated to look like the film's been weathered, sun-damaged, and otherwise attacked by age. Behind the scratches and shaking frames we see footage of a re-creation of the most average of North American lives: car rides, vacations, aquariums and boat trips. It's the type of video that sparks groans from the mouths of children visiting their grandparents. There's a mundane beauty amongst it all though. Scoff if you will at my earlier pronouncement of affection for Scarlett J., but if she weren't such a looker the whole concept wouldn't fly. The juxtaposition of images -- attractive and young vs. decaying and aged -- pushes the song to a higher plane.

So is Dylan's almost-bored sound on purpose? Maybe so. I wasn't in the studio, and I don't know what his motivations were. But, when watching the accompanying images, it sounds not as though he's disinterested, but that he's defeated: like Johnny Cash's final recordings when death was knocking on his doorstep. While the lyrics encompass the themes of love and death, it's the video's contradicting scenes that truly bring out the focus on mortality in Dylan's delivery.

"In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain, you'll never see me frown. I owe my heart to you, and that's sayin' it true. And I'll be with you when the deal goes down."

Watch and listen: "When the Deal Goes Down" from Modern Times.

Quinn Omori is a regular Tyee Music Pix contributor and writes the Vancouver music blog From Blown Speakers.