Love and Theft

1	Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
2	Mississippi
3	Summer Days
4	Bye and Bye
5	Lonesome Day Blues
6	Floater
7	High Water (for Charlie Patton)
8	Moonlight
9	Honest with Me
10	Po' Boy
11	Cry A While
12	Sugar Baby

Barnes & Noble

Forty-three albums into his four-decades-plus career, Bob Dylan at 60 still keeps us on our toes. At an age when his peers have long lost their creative edge, Dylan continues to toss his audience curveballs. Furthering the winning streak begun with 1997's acclaimed Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft offers acerbic observations, slapstick humor, and keening blues-rock galore -- the product of a man who's matured, yet willing to learn a thing or two along the way. The music is edgy, and his lyrics are laden with a unique combination of dark humor and chagrined cynicism. Dylan gets decidedly down-and-dirty on songs like the unvarnished "Lonesome Day Blues," which rivals the looser rockers on Blonde on Blonde, and the electrifying "Cry a While." When he's ready to reach beyond the full-tilt boogie approach, he heads for the hills -- of Appalachia, that is -- for the banjo-buoyed "Floater" and the gorgeous, gossamer "High Water (for Charley Patton)," which echoes the haunted growl of the titular bluesman. Like Dylan's best work, the album is as riddled with belly laughs as with head-scratchers, as borne out by the jug-band rib-tickler "Po' Boy," which practically bursts with Marx Brothers surrealism. The humor is abundant, as are the harsh indictments, making Love and Theft a criminally good album from a musical icon officially on a roll. Don't think twice, it's more than alright. David Sprague

All Music Guide

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 torch 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. Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Rolling Stone

[***** FIVE STARS] ...a stone-cold Dylan classic. Love and Theft takes us on a full-blown tour of American song in all its burlesque splendor, which includes, of course, Dylan's own psychedelic mutations of the blues....the remarkable achievement of Love and Theft is that Dylan makes the past sound as strange, haunted and alluring as the future - and this song and dance man sings as though he's drunk too deeply of the past to be either scared or impressed by anybody's future, least of all his own. And he sounds as if he's enjoying the ride. Rob Sheffield

USA Today

Dylan's 43rd album exudes the breezy confidence of a veteran and the adventurous energy of a budding prodigy...Love and Theft breaks new ground while simultaneously mining glorified traditions in American song. Edna Gundersen