Happy 25th Anniversary to Bob Dylan's Love And Theft

Happy 25th Anniversary to Bob Dylan's late career masterpiece, Love And Theft. 

Unfortunately released on September 11th 2001, this album sits favorably with Dylan's best records. 

 

In fact, it IS one of his best records. Top to bottom, musicality, lyrics, vibes, Love And Theft is incredibly solid and consistent, two attributes you would be hard pressed to add to even Bob's best studio efforts. 

Love And Theft plays like a musical history lesson, rooted in the cinematic American south. A humid gothic fairytale that finds Flannery O'Connor waltzing with Samuel Clemens after midnight in a delipidated mansion during a thunderstorm.   

Dylan blends 1920's pop and jazz with his blues and folk background throughout. Pushing up tempos, easing back with humor and levity, everything sounds so easy and breezy. This could be because this is the first album in his long career that he produced himself, while using his touring band of Larry Campbell – guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin, Charlie Sexton – guitar,  Tony Garnier – bass guitar and upright bass, David Kemper – drums with the addition of Augie Meyers – accordion, Hammond B3 organ, Vox organ. 

This ability to get his vision directly on record has not always happened when it comes to Bob's studio releases. The sound and songs are a total success this outing with natural feel flowing through the band's playing, which was honed throughout their time on The Never Ending Tour.  

Fading in with "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum", the music sounds as if it has always been playing, setting the tone of timelessness, before the rich bass and ringing guitar lines of "Mississippi" deliver the sonic goods around one of Dylan's most captivating late career lyrical gems. 

"Summer Days" kicks up the energy with swinging rock, great drum sounds and dynamite phrasing from Dylan. Notoriously lackadaisical when it came to recording his vocals in the past, on his terms he is fully onboard, just see how he delivers the line, "How can you say you love someone else when you know it’s me all the time?" jamming it in and making the song bend to his will.

The soft shuffle of "Bye and Bye" uses Meyers excellent organ work to spruce up the sound, the light stomping of "Lonesome Day Blues" finds Dylan singing with a bit of snarl at times (possibly at past marriages?) while "Floater" feels adrift in time, anchored by Campbell's violin work. "Highwater" is masterclass from Dylan and company and quite possibly the album highlight while "Moonlight" is a sweet love ballad, before the humor and rock kick up again for the electrifying "Honest With Me".   

That playfulness and sense of light heartedness really elevates Love And Theft as a whole with Bob delivering knock-knock jokes in "Po'Boy", recalling his early career where humor was such an important part of his appeal. "Cry a While" plays with tempo changes before "Sugar Baby" strips things down and theatrically closes the album on an apocalyptic note that rings on long after the record finishes up. 

Back in 2009, I worked with Shane from Glide Magazine and put together a list of our favorite (titled Best for clicks) albums of the decade. I got a few wrong, but I got the top one correct. This is what I said about Love And Theft then, and it all holds true still. 

The fluidity and depth, in sound and song, displayed here is the most successfully poignant release The Bard of the sixties has graced us with in over 25+ years.  Behind the swing (“Summer Days”) rock (“Honest With Me”) lounge (“Bye and Bye”) and country/folk (“Highwater”) is the best supporting act Dylan has used since The Band themselves.  

By giving his players some freedom to get loose and explore Dylan did the same for himself, there are actual jokes in the lyrics (“I’m sitting on my watch/so I can be on time”) to go along with his beautiful poetic stanzas (“Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay/You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way”).  

Produce by Dylan, the sense of warmness and back porch ease oozes out of every pore on Love and Theft, that sense that anything can happen in a winning direction hasn’t been heard since his “wild mercury days” of Blonde on Blonde. Dylan said when the album was released, “I think of it more as a greatest-hits album, volume one or volume two. Without the hits — not yet, anyway."  Well now it is official, they are all hits.

While it doesn't have the individual highs of Dylan's classic albums, the consistency and commitment of Dylan, seeing his vision through from start to finish, makes Love And Theft one of the best Dylan albums ever and a personal favorite of RtBE. 

So, on the 25th anniversary of it's release, play it loud, here are a few tunes to get you started.