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.

Dylan strikes again! You all are probably very curious what Bob Dylan has been up too since we last heard from him in 1997 with the Grammy winning TIME OUT OF MIND, and I was fortunate enough to pick up a copy on September 7th, with the bonus disc of two tracks. Don't worry, you all are in for a treat. The bonus disc has a traditional folk song entitled "I was Young When I Left Home," and has a running length of 5:24, and the other is an alternate version of "The Times They Are A' Changin'," and 2:57. Both are remarkable. But what about LOVE AND THEFT? Well, I'll tell you.

Dylan's miracle working knows no stopping, and with this release, he single-handedly creates an homage to the blues and yet captures all the tensions therein this particular genre. It's truly a greatest hits album, but not of Dylan, but rather the blues. That is the central paradox of this album. He has created a blues album which is simultaneously being torn in two directions, which epitomises the genre itself in the 1930s to the 1950s.

LOVE AND THEFT certainly marks its roots in the blues. Just a little over half the album plays like the successor that this record is to the 1997's smash TIME OUT OF MIND in the sense that it feels really bluesy but without the death obsession that its predecessor had. The other half, (these five tracks: Summer Day, Bye and Bye, Floater, Moonlight, and Po' Boy) sound like they call come from the same synapses of Dylan's brain, as their sound blur into one another. The best way to describe it is it sounds like old, simple bluesy folk compositions with a real 1930s to 1940s feel too it. Summer Day's intro reminds me of old 1950s rock, but then transform back into the similar feel of the aforementioned tracks. On first listening thru these songs, I found myself wanting to skip them, but on second listen I became more impressed with the compositions. It's as if Dylan wanted to make old scratchy records without the scratches from the Depression Era, and generally he is successful. Although I never thought I would make this analogy, the track "Moonlight" reminds me of old Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra.

Because this is the release immediately after TIME OUT OF MIND, an album that won Dylan critical praise and renewed interest, I feel I need to clarify LOVE AND THEFT's relationship to TIME OUT OF MIND. TIME OUT OF MIND, which plays like a concept album about death and being in love with a woman he wishes he wasn't, feels like BLOOD ON THE TRACKS aged twenty or so years, and an utter weariness permeates the proceedings. (Taken in this context, "To Make You Feel My Love" stands as one of the most depressing and pained things Dylan ever wrote).

And just like BLOOD ON THE TRACKS and DESIRE, TIME OUT OF MIND and LOVE AND THEFT are two completely different albums. BLOOD and TOOM are very personal albums. DESIRE has a weird world beat, and LOVE AND THEFT, although much closer to TOOM in its musical foundation (for both share blues as their central structure), loses the intimacy of TOOM, which creates yet another paradox, because TOOM has all the intimate factors that make Blues feel so personal to us, and yet LOVE AND THEFT loses that feeling of raw intimacy and yet it better captures the blues genre that TOOM does. TOOM is personal application of Blues principles, where LOVE AND THEFT is more of a textbook study of the tensions of the blues genre.

LOVE AND THEFT keeps the same blues base, but ultimately TIME OUT OF MIND is ultimately the bluesier in the modern context of the two records because there is more of a cohesian of the pain and more commonly perceived blues elements. Each song adds the pain felt in the previous song, making it like a snowball effect and culminating in the 16 minute closer "Highlands". Ironically, though, this record captures more of the blues tradition and the genre's myriad influences, although time may have obscured this. This tension between those old scratchy folk sounding songs and the more commonly perceived bluesy material creates a tension that is not felt on TIME OUT OF MIND at all. Side 1 (the first six songs), opens with two blues, then two of the other, then another one that's like TOOM, and then ends with "Floater". Side 2 is a similar story. Dylan's sequencing proves absolutely essential on this release, for without it the tension would simply be lost. A very notable composition is "Highwater (for Charlie Patton)*," which sounds like a close relative of "Ballad of Hollis Brown," and straddles the fence quite appropriately between the blues and folk but with more emphasis on folk. Because folk's influence on blues is never made more explicit in the context of this record than on here, "Highwater" stands as a very important link to the song cycle that is LOVE AND THEFT.

Dylan said of LOVE AND THEFT that the songs don't really have any genetic history, and that they're probably not like his previous works. Dylan said he thought of it more like a greatest hits album, either Volume I or II. There weren't any hits on this record -- at least, not YET.

Again, Dylan proves the most perceptive of his work. Although LOVE AND THEFT's closest relation in Dylan's catalogue is TIME OUT OF MIND, it stands as a greatest hits record of blues' history and the struggle with in the genre to find its own sound, and yet these are all new songs created by Dylan in the new millennium. That is the central paradox of LOVE AND THEFT, and what makes it so incredibly interesting.

*If you have any information on him please email me.

My favorite Dylan period was from Bringing It All Back Home to Blonde on Blonde. I remember the first time I checked into the possibility of listening to Bob's newer music. I clicked on a link at Amazon, and my first impression was that his voice was unbearable. Recently, after seeing the great reviews for this cd, I decided to take a chance and order it anyway. Am I ever glad I did. I really love the music. It's got what I would call a sort of '50s rock sound....but you can never really describe Bob Dylan's music, can you? I was also suprised to find that Dylan's new lower vocal range quickly grew on me - as soon as I put aside the expectation of hearing the Bob Dylan from the '60s. Being open minded is very important when it comes to music, and I'm glad I chose to give this one a chance.

All right, I have something I need to get off my chest. First, though, the review. This is incredible. While not quite in the class of Blood on the Tracks and the electric trilogy of 65-66, its still a dern fine piece of work, right next to Freewheelin', John Wesley Harding, and Time Out of Mind, masterpieces all. Tweedle Dee is a great opener, bluesy, a little bluegrass, awesome, straight through the finale Sugar Baby, which is a song that can take it's rightful place in Dylan's canon next to the other greats. Po' Boy is a wonderful song along with the fun Summer Days, the blues rocker Lonesome Day Blues, and especially Highwater, the second best song on the album, behind the instant classic, Mississippi. This brings me to what really cheeses me. How, how I ask, can people criticize his voice? A conventional voice singing Mississippi would have made it just a good song. Dylan's voice does something to it that is unimaginable if you've heard the Sheryl Crow version. His voice is an additional instrument that no one else knows how to play. Dylan's is truly beautiful singing. This voice is a world-weary, but I've survived dangnabbit voice and is truly a revelation. Feel free to follow Ricky Martin and his crew of phonies who are destroying American music, if that's your thing; eventually you'll find that road leads nowhere and long after they're gone, Dylan will remain.

Love and Theft is easily Bob Dylan's best CD in a long time. I think a line from the song Mississippi sums this album up fairly well: "Things are starting to get interesting right about now." After almost forty years in the business, Dylan is still putting out some of the best music he has ever written and recorded. It lacks the passion and underlying spirit of rebellion found in his early releases, but Love and Theft stands well above the vast majority of music being recorded these days. In Summer Days, Dylan says that you can repeat the past, and in a way, that is what he has done here. This Bob Dylan is a conglomeration of all the Bob Dylans that have come and gone for; drawing on varied aspects of his musical legacy, he manages to return to the basics while at the same time offering a fresh variety of sounds and musical approaches on these twelve tracks.

Mississippi would be my favorite song here; the manner of Dylan's extended delivery of incredible lyrics brings to mind classic songs such as Tangled Up in Blue. If you like energetic, toe-tapping rockers, Dylan proves he won't be performing sitting down for many a year with Lonesome Day Blues and Cry a While, two songs also heavily tinged with the blues, as well as Honest With Me. Summer Days is quite unusual, combining verifiable swing music with a strong pinch of rockabilly. On High Water (for Charlie Patton), Dylan incorporates the banjo and also possibly the mandolin, while Floater (Too Much to Ask) seems to feature violin music that works especially well in the transitions. I normally would not think of violins and Bob Dylan together, but the combination works fabulously. Floater is also notable for its plucky rhythm and subtly humorous lyrics. This album also features some slow, even poignant songs which I find it hard to describe. I could actually imagine the songs Bye and Bye and Moonlight being sung by a Sammy Davis Jr. to the accompaniment of the incomparable Laurindo Almeida. Po' Boy is another slow song, but it has a little stronger guitar playing pushing it along. Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum gets this album off to a great start, and Sugar Baby, a reflective song about looking backwards at the past closes it out on a magical note.

Dylan's voice isn't what it used to be, but I find the distinguished, gravel-like nature of it quite enjoyable, especially on tracks featuring a good beat and forceful lyrics. It can sound a little strained at times, but what we get in Love and Theft is the real Bob Dylan. He seems to recognize his place in history, appreciating the great days of the past but charging ahead proudly into the future. The music is what matters to him, and he presents it honestly and openly; the sense of comfort he seems to possess at this stage in his legendary career allows the words and music to emerge naturally, and I believe that is the secret of his unparalleled success.