Dylan co-wrote most of the songs with Robert Hunter and recorded with musicians including Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos.

The album was recorded at Jackson Browne's Groove Masters studio in Santa Monica, California and produced by Dylan under the pseudonym Jack Frost.

[3] In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Dylan commented on the collaboration: “Hunter is an old buddy, we could probably write a hundred songs together if we thought it was important or the right reasons were there...

[4] Dan Engler, writing in the Verde Independent, noted, "Bob Dylan claimed he could feel the presence of Buddy Holly while recording his landmark album Time Out of Mind in 1997.

[5] In their book Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track, authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon note that Sahm "embodied the long history of American popular music, from blues to Tex-Mex.

Critic David Fricke described it as a "dark new disc with a bluesy border-town feel" and quoted a source close to Dylan's camp as saying the album "came as a surprise".

Describing the album as a "murky-sounding, often perplexing record", David Fricke of Rolling Stone writes, "Dylan, who turns 68 in May, has never sounded as ravaged, pissed off and lusty".

[26] BBC noted that the album is "a masterful reading of 20th century American folk, albeit shot through with some mischievous lyrical twists" and compares it to "some Chicago urban blues tribute".

Corey DuBrowa of Paste Magazine, in his 8.10/10 review, stated: "Dylan's never spent much time contemplating the rearview mirror, but Together Through Life finds him more resolutely focused on the treacherous horizon than ever before: Song after song decries the mess we're in (the sneering, sarcastic jump-blues 'It's All Good,' in which Dylan's ravaged voice attacks the clichéd phrase as if it represented every banker, politician and Ponzi-scheme cheat he could conjure; 'My Wife's Home Town,' a bluesy jaunt that surveys the current economic wreckage as if from the passenger-side window of a car up on blocks) without forsaking the idea that love—and the comfort we find in shared misery—is essentially all we have left when a lifetime of ambition and achievement are swept away by the winds of change.

Indeed, when Dylan croaks in 'I Feel a Change Comin’ On,' '[I’ve] got the blood of the land in my voice,' you can hear quite plainly the sadness, disappointment and exhaustion of which he sings".

[31] The album is available as a one-CD version containing only the new material that Dylan recorded, or as a 3-disc deluxe version including the album itself, the "Friends & Neighbors" episode of Theme Time Radio Hour and a DVD featuring an interview with Dylan's first manager Roy Silver (recorded for the Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home, but unused).