Favorite Albums: 2000-2004
35. Bob Dylan, Love & Theft
Original position in my Stylus ballot: #34
Boy, was I happy when a promotional double LP of this album showed up at my college radio station. We indie DJs wouldn’t be playing it, and the classic rock dudes didn’t play vinyl period, so I was totally justified in taking it home! True, I wasn’t much of a Dylan fan, but I’d been meaning to make peace with his God-like genius and this one was getting great buzz. Throwing it on, I was glad to discover sounds more playful than the near-death blues I’d heard from Time Out Of Mind, even if I was feeling the tasteful but not starchy boogie more than soaking up the profundity.
Nearly a decade later, after learning Dylan’s more fun if you assume he’s just trying to make it rhyme and let profundity come to you rather than the other way around, this album’s stature hasn’t changed much for me. That it still sounds great after I’ve immersed and familiarized myself with his first professional decade or so is a credit, but I’m still mostly digging Gramps’ boogie. The superficiality of my appreciation is in part because I own it on double LP instead of my iPod, but those looking for a deeper discussion shouldn’t have too hard a Google search. If I was changing the cover for a Better Album Titles blog it’d be Pretty Damn Good For 60.
