Age becomes the eccentric, and nothing proves it quite so eloquently as this terrific and frequently barmy 43rd - count 'em! - album from Bob Dylan. What was one of the more edifying features of the glut of press commemorating Dylan's 60th birthday earlier this year was, beyond the nostalgia, a clear excitement about his new music.
'Love And Theft' proves that anticipation wasn't a triumph of hope over realism. Whilst Dylan's last album (1997's 'Time Out Of Mind') was his best set for some 20 years, the overriding impression it left was of a man preoccupied with his own mortality. 'Love And Theft' is a much tricksier, elusive and - important, this - entertaining beast, one that mingles reflections on ageing with a host of jokes, both good and bad, and some wickedly limber music.
The frankly crazy 'Summer Days' makes an excellent example, as it kicks up an implausibly cool jump jive rhythm and Dylan satirises himself brilliantly. "She says you can't repeat the past," he sings, "I say you can't? Whaddya mean you can't, of course you can."
In fact, Dylan's never sounded quite like this before. Many of the songs here are built on a blues template (and the rattling train blues of opener 'Tweedle Dee And Tweedle Dum' does recall 'Highway '61 Revisited') then stretched out to incorporate his explosion of surreal lyrical ideas.
But it's the lightness of touch that's most remarkable on 'Love And Theft', not least on the crooned Hot Club shuffles of 'By And By' and 'Floater'. Curmudgeonly, magically unpredictable and one of the few living artists with whom the phrase 'genius' sits easily, the old bugger has outwitted everyone yet again. A party album - who'd have thought? And it's marvellous.
