"Love And Theft"

by

Bob Dylan

Edit

A few months ago the music press dusted down their Bob Dylan obituaries, changed everything from the past to the present tense, and called it a celebration of Dylan's sixtieth birthday. Typically, Dylan took no public part in the celebrations.

"I blew out some candles, ate some cake, and went to bed," he told the Times.

He managed a little more too, spending a couple of weeks in a New York studio in mid-May, on a break from his ongoing touring.

With Dylan at the production desk the album was quickly recorded and mixed.

Dylan and his band were joined by keyboardist Augie Meyers, who reported that the sessions were workmanlike, thoroughly enjoyable, with Dylan penning extra verses between takes as needed.

The result, "Love And Theft", Dylan's 39th studio album, positively hums with brilliance.

Though it sounds little like the Grammy-winning "Time Out Of Mind", the new album fits right in with Bob's musical journey through the past decade or so.

In 1991 he released a collection of old folk and blues songs on "Good As I Been To You". A year later the more focused collection, "World Gone Wrong", popped out.

Dylan was delving deep back into his musical roots, shaking the dust off his battered copy of the "Anthology of American Folk Music" and clearing the dust from his own head. "Time Out Of Mind" came along in 1997, loaded with musical and lyrical references to myriad blues, folk and country songs. Old timey and bang up to date, the album was a huge success.

Four years on comes the next instalment and it is every bit as good.

A condensed, densely packed, pocket-sized version of Bob Dylan's America, "Love And Theft" sounds like nothing else you'll hear all year

From barroom blues to gentle swing, the 12 songs here cover a huge geographical territory: from the Deep South to Appalachia, from Florida to the Iron Range. The America that emerges is a feral country, barely a step away from the wild.

Full of hope, large skies and boundless possibility, this America is also ruthless, brutal and casually cruel. Dylan sings of honeybees buzzing and flowers blooming in the gently swaying Floater. A few verses later he's warning that he's not to be messed with.

Dylan narrates his way around this landscape, observing odd characters and weird locations, from the troublesome Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, who initially sound like a pair of loose-limbed eejits but who by song's end you'd not want to meet even on a well lit street, to the Po' Boy who can't put a foot right.

Romeo and Juliet drift by, as do Othello and Desdemona, immigrants to this restless nation; Darwin crops up, stranded out on Highway 5, his future looking dodo-bright; and seemingly plain folks all would fillet and skillet the unwary in a trice. Dylan shrugs his shoulders, makes a note in his book, and remarks about the changing weather and changing locations.

It is a rich confection indeed.

But all this musical arcana would mean little if the thing didn't sound so damned good.

Dylan and his band are in perfect synch, honed into a versatile and duck's arse tight unit by the endless touring.

Whether cutting loose on "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum" or on "Honest With Me" (which crackles and zips like an updated "Highway 61") or taking it gentle on "Po' Boy" and "High Water" Dylan and his band are a perfect musical unit. Effortlessly, they take on and a variety of styles and sounds, cutting a swathe across musical America. If it all goes pear shaped they'd make a hell of a decent living on the wedding and 21st circuit.

Jorge Luis Borges said that with the best poetry there is a thrill, an almost physical emotion, which comes with each reading. The lyrics, Dylan's singing, and phrasing, and that razor sharp sound, together make "Love And Theft" a truly thrilling thing. Poetry it may not be; a stirring, striking, and hugely enjoyable collection it certainly is.

Dylan effortlessly recovers the past with these songs. I imagine that this is the musical landscape that the teenage Dylan dreamt up living through those long cold Iron Range winters, his radio tuned to stations from Memphis and New Orleans broadcasting weird and wonderful tunes.

Dylan told USA Today "I think of it more as a greatest-hits album, volume one or volume two. Without the hits - not yet, anyway." And you know, he wasn't far wrong.

"Love And Theft" is a gem.