Customer Reviews

"Love and Theft" (Limited Edition)

5 star:		(57)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Look at what this man has done in the past 12 years: the wonderful "Oh, Mercy," two stunning, traditional folk albums (including a Grammy for "World Gone Wrong"), the mesmerizing "Bootleg Series," "Live '66" capturing one of the most important moments in 20th century music, an Academy Award for "Things Have Changed," a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature, a Kennedy Center Award, a Grammy for the haunting "Time Out of Mind," and now the classic "Love and Theft"!! Suddenly, Bob Dylan is the most accomplished artist of the past decade. He did it from the age of 20-30, and he's done it again from the age of 50-60. I hope everyone understands our great fortune in witnessing Bob Dylan's incomprehensible genius. After all he's done, how does he find something different?! "Mississippi" is as good as anything anyone has ever written, and this album would receive four stars if it contained "Mississippi" and a host of marginal songs. However, there is not a single "good" song here -- they are all astonishing. We had no right to expect anything of this magnitude from Dylan. But thank God he once again exceeded everyone's expectations.

As a person who came to Bob Dylan's music later than some. It has now been 20 years + for me. I own everything he's released. Some I dislike and/or are bemused by what I heard...at first listening.
Thus, was not the case with "Love and Theft".
Bob's most riveting and finest "produced" work in the past 20+ years has been arguably through the creative sonic visual genius of Daniel Lanois. These albums, "Oh Mercy" and "Time out of Mind" resulted in a remarkable body of subsequent performances with again, arguably the best band Bob Dylan has ever shared a stage with.
This band and Bob's stellar songwriting and production work (yes folks, Jack Frost is Bob Dylan)has made this Bob Dylan's own individual vision fulfilled or at the very least tapped into. A development and sound that is a continuing Pheonix in Bob's career, This is Bob Dylan's Masterpiece that he spoke of that first time in the basement in Saugerties, NY.
I believe after several listening's into "Love and Theft". Fans, New and Old will be moved for as long as anyone has been since they first heard Subterranean Homesick Blues.
As a Bonus, in this Special edition you get two song, One I had only heard Bob sing on tape in a Hotel Room in 1961 as an import. It is a beautiful piece of Bob interpretation.
Times they are a-changin'(alternate version) is like an old friend with a slightly different vibe but, with no loss to it's greatness of idea, arrangement and performance.
Enjoy this music from a man who knows the truth's and lived a life. Many lives really. He is so deep rooted in being human and to living in the present. This is Bob Dylan. In his most accomplished and contemporary reinvention.

No, this isn't Dylan's most personal (that would be Blood on the Tracks) his most energetic (Live 1966) or mysterious (The Basement Tapes or perhaps Time Out of Mind), but Love and Theft's twelve songs show Dylan at his most varied, in an astonishing mix of electric and country blues, twenties pop, fifties rhythm and blues, and sixties Highway 61-style rock, all performed with a maturity and humor that carries the music to the highest level.

Love and Theft is Dylan's first album recorded with his current touring band, certainly the finest he's worked with since The Band.

This is the first great rock record of the decade.

It's worth mentioning that the limited edition contains two tracks recorded in '61 and '63, "I Was Young When I Left Home," and "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (an alternate take), well worth the few extra dollars.

If you care about Dylan at all, this one's essential.

Thanks, Bob. I needed it.

Well it finally happened! For the first time since the heady days of the '70s Bob Dylan has managed to release 2 consecutive good albums! Back in the 80s the finest albums, Infidels and Oh Mercy, were seperated by some pretty poor material (Down in the Groove, anyone?). Then, after Oh Mercy everything went wrong again. Under the Red Sky was a mediocre start to the 90s, and things got worse. Then suddenly in 1998 he released the superb Time Out of Mind. Arguably his finest album since Desire. The world waited with baited breath for Dylan to ruin his new-found respect with another album of folk "classics" like Froggy Went a Courting. But no! Love and Theft is a truly great album. If it lacks the gritty roughness of Time Out of Mind it more than makes up for it in melodic content! Mississippi is, as everyone says, a great tune! On Moonlight (and you really have to hear this to believe it) Dylan actually tries to croon! All the great American styles are present on this album, including a good dose of earthy 12-bar blues! On first playing I was convinced after the first 11 tracks that this was a Dylan classic. Then I heard the last track "Sugar Baby". It made my toes curl! "Sugar Baby" is a beautiful and haunting song! Perhaps his finest closing song on an album since "Sara" closed Desire over 25 years ago. He actually 'sings' on this album. And what a performance. His heart really seems to be in the music. Frankly, so is mine.

With this latest, mighty effort Bob Dylan blows away all the pretenders who have been populating the upper reaches of the "Billboard" charts and selling us sham pop music. Now THIS is real music -- it would be a shame if only Dylan fanatics and old fogies are the only ones to listen.

On first spin, "Love and Theft" seems like a spiritual cousin to the top-selling soundtrack of "O Brother Where Art Thou?" in that they both concern themselves with "old-timey" but mostly American forms of music. Dylan offers blues ruminations and Tin Pan Alley tunes and -- driving the toughest, tightest band he's fielded in years -- takes us on a whirlwind tour of American musical styles with pit stops along Highway 61 and Desolation Row.

This album is so rich and deep it's hard to single out one tune. "Mississippi," a mid-tempo meditation, wouldn't have been out of place on "Time Out of Mind." "Honest With Me" rocks like the old days, and "Summer Days" is a slap of honest-to-gosh rockabilly.
And don't be fooled by the somber subject matter of Dylan's recent work -- "Love and Theft" is the funniest Dylan album ever. "Po'Boy" even has a sort of knock-knock joke.

Some copies come with a second CD, with two previously unreleased early Dylan songs. "I Was Young When I Left Home," cut in 1961, is Bob's version of an old folk song and the other tune is a somber, quietly sung alternate take of "The Times They Are A' Changin'." I get a weird feeling listening to this song, today (the day of the CD's release) while watching the news from New York and Washington. Dylan has always been rather prescient, but ...

In short, this is classy, absolutely assured rock music from the form's greatest practitioner. "Love and Theft" is assuredly the year's best CD. Highly recommended.

In the final sentence of his great 918-page epic `Song & Dance Man 3: the Art of Bob Dylan' [2000], Michael Gray wrote of his earnest hope that Dylan `in the wintertime' of his work would call `a halt to his reluctance' and go on to produce yet more `extraordinary new songs that really speak to any audience, performed with grace and wit and ardour'.
Worry no more Michael - here they are!
This is a wonderful album, fit for the highest levels in the Dylan canon. Here again is all the matchless songcraft, the wit, the unmistakable love for the great old American music that has marked all Dylan's great work. And all presented via some of his greatest-ever vocalising.
Debate will doubtless rage about which of the 12 songs are `classics' and which `throwaways'. I think this is a feature of the album that makes it especially Dylanesque; what at first may sound like lesser-lights, on further listening reveal layers that make the songs much more. `Floater [Too Much To Ask]' is one such, with its wonderful evocative quality that has Huck and Jim at the tiller in my mind's eye. `Po' Boy' is another.
But instant masterpieces there certainly are: listen to the way he sings `I crossed that riverrrrr...' on 'Mississippi', surely one of Dylan's greatest-ever vocals, to say nothing of the tremendous rhythm section. And when has he ever produced a more atmospheric track than `Highwater [for Charley Patton]' in which he manages to pay tribute to perhaps the greatest of all Delta bluesmen, not only by including his name in the title but by reference to several Patton classics [Highwater Everywhere Parts 1 & 2, Shake It and Break It, High Sherrif Blues, for example] in the lyrics. Yet the song itself is nothing like anything Charley ever did. Rarely has there ever been so varied a Dylan album. Fans and scholars will yet again have a great time speculating on what Bob is doing here. `Concept album' is a phrase that will ring for sometime when this disc is discussed. None of us is a Michael Gray but that need not stop us throwing ideas around; here's one:
In his liner notes for the album 'The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers:a tribute' 1997 CK 67676, Bob wrote:
"Jimmie Rodgers of course is one of the guiding lights of the 20th century whose way with song has always been an inspiration to those of us who followed the path. A blazing star whose sound was and remains the raw essence of individuality...his voice gives hope to the vanquished and humility to the mighty [NB 'I'm going to teach peace to the conquered/I'm going to tame the proud' - Lonesome Day Blues, from Love & Theft]. He sings not only his bawdy, upbeat blues and railroading songs, but also tin pan alley trash and crooner lullabies as well. He is the Ringmaster General and is, as in the Warren Smith ballad, the man who 'held your hand and sang you a song'. What more could he do...Times change and don't change. The nature of humanity has stayed the same. Jimmie is at the heart of it all with a seriousness and humour which is bedfuddling."
A thought that sparked a concept?
Oh, and the 2 bonus tracks are great too.

A pop culture magazine recently named Lucinda Williams the best songwriter in America. She is great, too. But "Love and Theft" is one of the best set of songs I've ever heard, right up there with Lucinda's first, Hiatt's "Bring the Family," and the Thompsons' "Shoot out the Lights," and Bob Dylan is unsurpassed as a songwriter. He's got a great band playing behind him, too. Lucinda recruited them to play on her new record. Every note they play serves the songs. I can't make much sense out of the lyrics and I never thought much of Dylan as a so-called poet, but this is poetry. I never imagined that Dylan would make a record I could like as much as "Highway 61 Revisited" but this could be it.

I had listened to this album millions and millions of times, wondering how Bob Dylan could make such a comeback. With songs like "Lonesome Day Blues" and "Honest With Me" on an album, it's already good enough. But then, my dad bought the double disc special edition, and it was even better. Yes, I may be making a big deal that it has only two songs, but they're early, raw, and wonderful sounding Bob Dylan tunes. The first song, "I Was Young When I Left Home," is very early, 1961 to be exact. It sounds great, and also it is the first public release of the song. The second song, an alternate version of "The Times They Are A-Changin'," is almost as good as the final cut. If you buy this album, good for you. It's a great album by itself and you will have many years of listening enjoyment. But if you buy the special edition "Love And Theft," you're getting more then you're paying for!

Love and Theft is easily Bob Dylan's best CD in a long time. I think a line from the song Mississippi sums this album up fairly well: "Things are starting to get interesting right about now." After almost forty years in the business, Dylan is still putting out some of the best music he has ever written and recorded. It lacks the passion and underlying spirit of rebellion found in his early releases, but Love and Theft stands well above the vast majority of music being recorded these days. In Summer Days, Dylan says that you can repeat the past, and in a way, that is what he has done here. This Bob Dylan is a conglomeration of all the Bob Dylans that have come and gone for; drawing on varied aspects of his musical legacy, he manages to return to the basics while at the same time offering a fresh variety of sounds and musical approaches on these twelve tracks.

Mississippi would be my favorite song here; the manner of Dylan's extended delivery of incredible lyrics brings to mind classic songs such as Tangled Up in Blue. If you like energetic, toe-tapping rockers, Dylan proves he won't be performing sitting down for many a year with Lonesome Day Blues and Cry a While, two songs also heavily tinged with the blues, as well as Honest With Me. Summer Days is quite unusual, combining verifiable swing music with a strong pinch of rockabilly. On High Water (for Charlie Patton), Dylan incorporates the banjo and also possibly the mandolin, while Floater (Too Much to Ask) seems to feature violin music that works especially well in the transitions. I normally would not think of violins and Bob Dylan together, but the combination works fabulously. Floater is also notable for its plucky rhythm and subtly humorous lyrics. This album also features some slow, even poignant songs which I find it hard to describe. I could actually imagine the songs Bye and Bye and Moonlight being sung by a Sammy Davis Jr. to the accompaniment of the incomparable Laurindo Almeida. Po' Boy is another slow song, but it has a little stronger guitar playing pushing it along. Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum gets this album off to a great start, and Sugar Baby, a reflective song about looking backwards at the past closes it out on a magical note. The two extra songs included with the limited edition of this album are very nice and more than worth the added cost. The 1963 alternate version of The Times They Are A-Changin' is crystal clear and a great song to have in your Bob Dylan collection.

Dylan's voice isn't what it used to be, but I find the distinguished, gravel-like nature of it quite enjoyable, especially on tracks featuring a good beat and forceful lyrics. It can sound a little strained at times, but what we get in Love and Theft is the real Bob Dylan. He seems to recognize his place in history, appreciating the great days of the past but charging ahead proudly into the future. The music is what matters to him, and he presents it honestly and openly; the sense of comfort he seems to possess at this stage in his legendary career allows the words and music to emerge naturally, and I believe that is the secret of his unparalleled success.

This is the Dylan disc that deserves the praise given to the uneven Time Out of Mind. Where the 12-bar blues tracks on Time sounded lethargic, the ones here have a fiery bite. In fact, who could have foreseen the 60-year-old Bob sounding like Captain Beefheart, as he does on Cry a While?
No sane person would argue that Dylan's voice isn't shot. The beauty of this disc is that he is now writing songs accordingly. In fact, it's hard to imagine the beautiful Po' Boy sung in anything but Bob's current raspy wheeze.
Even better is the pacing: blistering blues tracks alternate methodically with dreamy, dust-bowl melodies --- all played by a band that makes this one of Dylan's most musical ventures.
And where Time was dark and direct, Love and Theft is vintage Dylan: funny, joyful and surreal.
Bottom line: 12 5-star songs. I'd like to see anyone top that this year.
The bonus disc (only two tracks) is a fun listen. I was Young When I Left Home is a blue variation on 500 Miles, sung by a 20-year-old Dylan. The alternate version of The Times They Are a-Changin'(1963)is somewhat more melodic than the released version, and remains more relevant than ever.
In the end, the bonus disc would have dwarfed many previous new Dylan releases. Not this time. This is, quite simply, a classic.