Love and Theft - Bob Dylan

BOB DYLAN - "LOVE AND THEFT"

Bob Dylan released this album on September 11, 2001. But putting any emphasis or suggesting a prophecy based on the date is stupid and uneducated. Clearly it is just a coincidence. LT is a great record by a great artist. The songs on this album show a sort of intense feeling like a disgruntled dog, barking its music through guitar strings. It's not necessarily angry or mad, but expressive. His storytelling is as strong as ever, and His Band is in top shape. The rollicking guitar and bass lines carry the album from the fade-in of that repetitious yet tasty lick of "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum" through that slow-churning guitar in "Sugar Baby". The band's bluesy instruments give LT a quality desired by every artist in making an album. That is, creating this isolated bubble of music with complete artist focus. Clearly there is no other bluesy-country-rock act as popular or as contemporary as Bob Dylan's current creative output. No longer that oft-quoted folk songwriter voice of a generation he was in the 60's, Dylan reinvents himself once again as the band leader of his very own cowboy band. Many believe his previous studio effort "Time Out Of Mind" is the first of a type of trilogy by Dylan continued on by "Love and Theft" and 2006's "Modern Times". It makes sense, as they all take Dylan in a new direction. Dylan is no longer Bob Dylan but his bluesman, crooner, and saloon act counterpart Jack Fate, Jack Frost, or whatever pseudonym you wish to use. It is even more evident in his previously mentioned work "Modern Times" where he performs excellent, faithful renditions of early 20th century classics like "Rollin' and Tumblin'" and "The Levee's Gonna Break", once recorded beautifully by Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin, respectively. But their versions reflect their uniqueness as a band, much like Zeppelin's other classic blues covers of Willie Dixon's stuff. But Dylan performs and writes new blues classics, possibly even surpassing in authenticity and quality of songs by the likes of Robert Johnson and Willie Dixon. "Lonesome Day Blues" is an example of a simply constructed blues-type song if just read on paper, but the timbre of Dylan's voice and of his band's performance reflect not only the sorrow intended by the blues and clearly shown by much earlier records, but also the anger that accompanies sadness. The thing about these songs is that with Dylan's voice and enunciation and phrasing, no one can come close to singing these songs with the same meaning that he can. I've heard it said that "Dylan's voice is shot, but he damn well can sing". Even Freddy Mercury couldn't come close to Dylan's style of singing. With little harmonica and a lack of true acoustic numbers, this album is more rock sounding then it does blues, but everything else implies blues. The songs put Dylan into this other persona of losing and gaining love which gives way for the title "Love and Theft". It could be about how he loved and it was stolen, a sequence of events. Or it could be separate like love is one topic and theft or loss (blues) is another. But with every story of love comes a story of loss, so both can be true as some songs aren't about love, like Summer Days, a sort of bluesy number as he laments the end of summer but rejoices knowing "a place where there's still somethin' going on". The ordering of the songs on the record work ingeniously. The rocking "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum" is followed by the lamenting and grooving "Mississippi", and follows that pattern pretty well with exception of the little middle bit with the nostalgic fiddle work on "Floater" and the subsequent "High Water" with its eloquent banjo work, a feat hard to execute these days without seeming like a novelty song or campy. I digress; the sweeping melodies in the gorgeous waves of "Moonlight" offer a surprising contrast to the crunching riff and squealing guitar in "Honest With Me". This repeats when the slow but rollicking and tempo-changing "Cry A While" is delicately placed in between "Po' Boy" (whose line "Po' boy where you been?" alone actually makes me sympathetic for this character) and the finale "Sugar Baby" (whose quiet accordion adds an incredible quality to this song). All in all, "Love and Theft" is one of Dylan's finest efforts in recent years and takes a keen ear to appreciate the harmony of Dylan's outstanding backing band and his voice, aged like tart wine from those innocent grapes so drastically grasped by the lure of people from Hibbing to Greenwich Village and across the world in bottles. If anyone reads this, I hope you have gained something from my meandering insight on this particular record.

Thought I'd leave you empty handed, did you? Here's a nice selection of live L&T tracks, with the exception of "Bye and Bye". Sorry 'bout that.

Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff - "Sugar Baby"

Info - http://www.bobsboots.com/CDs/cd-l80.html
Live recordings - http://rapidshare.de/files/36055412/2001__5_October__Spokane__Love_and_Theft_Live.zip

Thanks to ER for providing the link to the above recording.