Bob Dylan: Love and Theft

I was wary about this when it came out (on 11 September 2001), because people swore Bob was back on top form. But they said that about Oh Mercy, and I felt they exaggerated. Then I was sceptical when they said the same about Time Out of Mind, but I relented, and once more I felt there had been some exaggeration. However, I saw this on Amazon for only £6.99, less than six months after its release, and I'd just read Greil Marcus's first book about Dylan (all this is going on just a week or two before I got World Gone Wrong), so I snapped it up.

I like it more than either Oh Mercy or Time Out of Mind. I like the sound of the songs and the production (Daniel Lanois' production on the other two seems preoccupied with shrouding them in ambience at the expense of straightforwardness). You could say that the songs aren't as deep and profound as some of his old ones. For sure they seem to be concerned first with getting your foot tapping and only second with making you think. And often songs that initially seem profound end up sounding dumb and pretentious in the long run, while the dance songs have the legs to keep going.

And there are at least two songs here that I think will become classics if they're not already: High Water (for Charley Patton) and Sugar Baby.

I think of this album in the same light as Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. Apparently Eastwood bought the screenplay and then sat on it for ten or fifteen years, until he was old enough to play the central character convincingly. Some of these songs sound like they've been waiting around for some time, until Bob and his voice grew into them.

MusicBrainz entry for this album