"Love and Theft"

Bob Dylan | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 11, 2001)
• Original Release Date: 2001
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B00005NI5Y
• Also Available in: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (332 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,322 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #100 in Music > Folk > Contemporary Folk > Singer-Songwriters

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

When we last left the ever-confounding saga that is Bob Dylan's now-superhuman recording career, he'd reunited with producer Daniel Lanois, with whom he cut 1997's Time Out of Mind, his most coherent and appealing collection in nearly a decade. Now the still-reigning prince of musical contrariety and potent wordplay is back with his most focused, well-played collection since 1989's Oh Mercy, another Lanois production. One listen to the fade-in of the opener "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum" and it's clear that all Dylan's roadwork has shaped him and his band (including guitarist Charlie Sexton) into a mighty musical weapon. And while his craggy howl continues to resonate, it's the songs here that astonish. A sturdy midtempo melody makes "Mississippi" the equal of the best numbers on Time, which it was actually written for. He convincingly puts over the R&B swing (yes, swing) number "Summer Days." "Honest with Me" ("I'm not sorry for nuthin' I've done / I'm glad I fight, I only wished we'd won") is a driving rocker that packs a genuine punch. And the light, lounge-like "Bye and Bye" and the southland ramble "Floater (Too Much to Ask)" show extraordinary confidence. He's labeled these songs "blues-based," but in typical Dylan fashion what would promise to be the most overtly blues number here--"High Water (for Charlie Patton)"--sounds like a banjo-based gunfighter ballad. But then that's this artist's gift: confounding expectations. --Robert Baird

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Welcome to Bob Dylan's Wild America, September 14, 2001

By 

Tiernan Henry (Galway, Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: "Love and Theft" (Audio CD)

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.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm About to Hit Someone, September 16, 2001

By 

"guyfreakinmorcado" (Chanhassen, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: "Love and Theft" (Audio CD)

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.

47 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was suprised by my reaction to this., October 10, 2004

By 

V. Messner (PA, United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: "Love and Theft" (Audio CD)

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.