"Love and Theft"
| "Love and Theft" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
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| Studio album by Bob Dylan | ||||
| Released | September 11, 2001 | |||
| Recorded | May 2001 | |||
| Genre | Folk rock, blues rock, country blues, roots rock, electric blues, Americana | |||
| Length | 57:25 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Jack Frost (Bob Dylan's pseudonym) | |||
| Bob Dylan chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 93/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Blender | |
| Chicago Sun-Times | |
| Entertainment Weekly | A− |
| The Guardian |  |
| Los Angeles Times | |
| Q | |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Spin | 9/10 |
| The Village Voice | A+ |
"Love And Theft" (generally referred to as Love and Theft) is the thirty-first studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on September 11, 2001, by Columbia Records. It featured backing by his touring band of the time, with keyboardist Augie Meyers added for the sessions. It peaked at #5 on the Billboard 200, and has been certified Gold by the RIAA. A limited edition release included two bonus tracks on a separate disc recorded in the early 1960s, and two years later, on September 16, 2003, this album was one of fifteen Dylan titles reissued and remastered for SACD hybrid playback.
The album continued Dylan's artistic comeback following 1997's Time Out of Mind and was given an even more enthusiastic reception. The title of the album was apparently inspired by historian Eric Lott's book Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, which was published in 1993. "Love and Theft becomes his Fables of the Reconstruction, to borrow an R.E.M. album title", writes Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune (published September 11, 2001), "the myths, mysteries and folklore of the South as a backdrop for one of the finest roots rock albums ever made."
The opening track, "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum", includes many references to parades in Mardi Gras in New Orleans, where participants are masked, and "determined to go all the way" of the parade route, in spite of being intoxicated. "It rolls in like a storm, drums galloping over the horizon into ear shot, guitar riffs slicing with terse dexterity while a tale about a pair of vagabonds unfolds," writes Kot. "It ends in death, and sets the stage for an album populated by rogues, con men, outcasts, gamblers, gunfighters and desperados, many of them with nothing to lose, some of them out of their minds, all of them quintessentially American.
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Wikipedia