By Jacob Lee
“Love and Theft” is easily Bob Dylan’s best work in years. Surpassing its predecessor, the 1997 Grammy-winning “Time Out of Mind”, this new work is superior to anything he’s done since the mid-70s. Dylan told USA Today in July, “All the songs are variations on the 12-bar theme and blues-based melodies.” This is not really an accurate description of the variety of songs on this release. The songs range from different kinds of blues to ballads to songs that would feel at home in the repertoire of Cab Calloway. “Love and Theft” is never dull, but occasionally makes you scratch your head and wonder, “Where did that come from?”
Starting off the album is a song named “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum” that is reminiscent of “Dirt Road Blues” from “Time Out of Mind”. In “Tweedle Dee”, Dylan shows us that he still has the songwriting ability that made him famous almost forty years ago. Making his first frequent literary references for the first time since his glory days of 1964-1966, this track shows Dylan in a form he hasn’t been in since “Blonde on Blonde”. It only gets better from there.
Next is “Mississippi”. An outtake from “Time Out of Mind” that has since been recorded by Sheryl Crow, this is one of the most melodic songs Dylan has written in recent years. Following this is the juke joint jump blues of “Summer Days” and the slow, jazzy “Bye and Bye,” which is unlike anything Dylan has ever recorded. This is one of the songs that makes you scratch your head. After slowing it down, Dylan rocks out with “Lonesome Day Blues” and then jazzes it up again with “Floater (Too Much to Ask)”. One of the best songs on this album comes next.
“Highwater (For Charlie Patton)” has a title that insinuates a blues in the style of the title performer, but in top form as Dylan the Contrary, the arrangement of this song prominently features a banjo. “Highwater” tells of a flood in a way only Dylan could do. Warning “Highwater rising. The shacks are sliding down/Folks lose their possession and folks are leaving town”, Dylan then makes reference to George Lewes, husband of novelist George Eliot and author in his own right, and later to Charles Darwin who, in the song, is “trapped out there on Highway 5.” Near the end of the song, Dylan does make reference to the quintessential blues song, “Dust My Broom” by Robert Johnson. This song along with the others in this collection of generally impersonal songs show Dylan can still write the way he did in the early days of his career. The album continues in the same unpredictable way it began. Dylan even shows us his long concealed playful side in the song “Po’ Boy”, which is available for free download on bobdylan.com. The lyrics say, “Knockin’ on the door, I said, ÔWho’s it, where you from?’/Man said, ÔFreddie.’ I said, ÔFreddie who?’/He said, ÔFreddie or not, here I come!'” Though very different than what is expected of Dylan, every song is good, and some are sure to become classics.
While albums such as “Street Legal” and “Empire Burlesque” seemed to be made to fulfill contractual obligations, the songs of “Love and Theft” give one the impression that Dylan had a purpose in writing these songs. The stories in these songs are filled with characters like Ophelia from “Desolation Row,” a Dylan masterwork from 1965’s “Highway 61 Revisited”.
On top of his high quality compositions, Dylan and his touring band perform arrangements of these songs much better than his critically acclaimed work with Daniel Lanois, the producer of “Time Out of Mind” and 1989’s “Oh, Mercy”. Not only are the arrangements and musical performances impressive, his voice is less harsh than it has been since the seventies.
Two editions of “Love and Theft” are available. The regular version has twelve new tracks. The other, available for a few dollars more, has the twelve tracks as well as a bonus CD with an alternate version of “The Times They Are a Changin'” from 1963 and a previously unreleased song from 1961 called “I Was Young When I Left Home.”
