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Bob Dylan - Vocals, Guitar, Piano
Larry Campbell - Guitar, Violin, Banjo, Mandolin
Charlie Sexton - Guitar
Tony Garnier - Bass
David Kemper - Drums
Augie Meyers - Vox Organ, B3, Accordion
(Clay Meyers plays Bongos on Tweedle Dee and Honest With
Me)
Produced by: Jack Frost
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Bob
Dylan's career has always been about defying expectations.
Accordingly he followed 1997's much-heralded TIME OUT OF
MIND with a marked about-face. Where its predecessor was a
bleak emotional landscape full of languid atmospheres,
existential sentiments, and graveyard vocal delivery, LOVE
AND THEFT finds Dylan much more energized and hopeful.
Instead of swamp-like textures, we get sharp, cracking
bar-band blues, and lissome ballads with a '20s/'30s feel.
The old codger has never sounded more spry; after
observing that "summer days and summer nights are
gone," he follows up with "I know a place where
there's still something going on." Elsewhere he's
variously hunting bear, standing on a table to make a
toast, burning down a house, and starting a new empire.
The musical context for all this uproar is informed more
heavily by Dylan's earliest Americana roots than anything
other than his albums of traditional folk songs. Delta and
Chicago blues are templates for many songs, while a few
others even more anachronistically suggest a future for
Dylan as ghost writer for Leon Redbone. The lyrics
themselves are littered with quotes from/references to old
blues tunes, but Dylan's classic non-linear structure and
wild imagination allow him to transcend his influences
even as he assimilates them.
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