Time Out of Mind was a legitimate comeback, Bob Dylan's first collection of original songs in nearly ten years and a risky rumination on mortality, but its sequel, Love and Theft, is his true return to form, not just his best album since Blood on the Tracks, but the loosest, funniest, warmest record he's made since The Basement Tapes. There are none of the foreboding, apocalyptic warnings that permeated Time Out of Mind and even underpinned "Things Have Changed," his Oscar-winning theme to Curtis Hanson's 2000 film Wonder Boys. Just as important, Daniel Lanois' deliberately arty, diffuse production has retreated into the mist, replaced by an uncluttered, resonant production that gives Dylan and his ace backing band room to breathe. And they run wild with that liberty, rocking the house with the grinding "Lonesome Day Blues" and burning it down with the fabulously swinging "Summer Days." They're equally captivating on the slower songs, whether it's the breezily romantic "Bye and Bye," the orch song "Moonlight," or the epic reflective closer, "Sugar Baby." Musically, Dylan hasn't been this natural or vital since he was with the Band, and even then, those records were never as relaxed and easy or even as hard-rocking as these. That alone would make Love and Theft a remarkable achievement, but they're supported by a tremendous set of songs that fully synthesize all the strands in his music, from the folksinger of the early '60s, through the absurdist storyteller of the mid-'60s, through the traditionalist of the early '70s, to the grizzled professional of the '90s. None of this is conscious, it's all natural. There's an ease to his writing and a swagger to his performance unheard in years -- he's cracking jokes and murmuring wry asides, telling stories, crooning, and swinging. It's reminiscent of his classic records, but he's never made a record that's been such sheer, giddy fun as this, and it stands proudly among his very best albums.
(big ups to Fedge for asking a question that inspired this ramble)I saw Death Cab for the first time live a couple of weeks ago, and I was really, truly impressed. And I promise this has a lot to do with Dylan. I'm not a snob, and if I slap down more than 10 dollars on anything I'm going to find a way to have fun with it. However, I am admittedly really fucking hard to impress in a live show...
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My good friend dermahrk said (in another thread)..."Actually, Dylan gave up politics, what, 35 years ago and hasn't written a "protest" song for a long, long time." I think it would be closer to the truth to say that Dylan backed off the simplistic blacknwhite nature of his earlier protest songs because they're obvious traps. "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" is a pounding, powerful song. Pointi...
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I have posted & rhapsodized about this song before, but I don't care. This song slips easily into Dylan's top ten, lifetime. Maybe top five. It is such a tour-de-force lyricaly, and its coupled with some of the most impressive music he's ever produced.>>> His jaundiced view of the slow-motion armageddon of our corrosive culture, expressed so brutally in Things Have Changed, is now present...
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'where were you when the planes hit?' - that's our generation's jfk question. i remember it well. unless you were directly invovled in the day's events, the answers are all strikingly similar.i was working in my (then) company's office in downtown boston. someone yelled across the room, 'go to cnn.com.' the image on the front page, with very little discriptive language, showed what was sure...
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(big ups to Fedge for asking a question that inspired this ramble)I saw Death Cab for the first time live a couple of weeks ago, and I was really, truly impressed. And I promise this has a lot to do with Dylan. I'm not a snob, and if I slap down more than 10 dollars on anything I'm going to find a way to have fun with it. However, I am admittedly really fucking hard to impress in a live show...
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nothing more appropriates for summer listening than a song called "summer days." that it is by bob dylan is a plus, plus, plus!the direction that bob has taken since oh mercy has been fantastic...coming to terms with aging, death and all that... in a way that even the gifted young man he was couldn't master because...well, he was young.i call this is "cowboy period," but i guess its just becau...
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Now, this is more like it. After seeing the lists of the top albums of the decade from some of the more independent leaning sites, most with very few albums by veteran artists, we were left with the feeling that people like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Johnny Cash had taken the decade off.Uncut has come out with their Top 150 Albums of the 00's and it is nice to see acknowledgment for thos...
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Amazon: Bob Dylan - "Mississippi" from Tell Tale Signs: the Bootleg Series Vol. 8, out October 7 on Sony BMG. It's a six-minute outtake from the Time Out of Mind sessions. Different from the one that eventually ended up on...
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Columbia Records and Bob Dylan are offering the song "Mississippi," as a free download for a limited time exclusively on Amazon. The track will also be available on October 7 as part of Bob Dylan's Tell Tale Signs - The Bootleg Series Vol. 8. More from the press release: Originally recorded for the Grammy Award-winning Time Out [...]
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| Title | Lyrics | Buy |
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| 1 Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum |
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| 2 Mississippi |
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| 3 Summer Days |
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| 4 Bye and Bye |
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| 5 Lonesome Day Blues |
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| 6 Floater (Too Much to Ask) |
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| 7 High Water (For Charley Patton) |
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| 8 Moonlight |
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| 9 Honest with Me |
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| 10 Po' Boy |
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| 11 Cry a While |
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| 12 Sugar Baby |
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 "Love and Theft")
