There are the essential albums that need to be in everyone's collection. There are the personal favorites, the ones that aren't highly acclaimed but still get played every once in a while. And then there are the albums that you stick in the back of your collection because you want to forget that you spent money on them. "Own It or Disown It" gives the writer the opportunity to look at such discarded albums and determine if they are diamonds in the rough or if they deserve to be used as mini-frisbees.
This is the third week of Owning Metacritic, and...well, this is probably the most difficult column I’ll write this month because there’s not much I can say about it. First, though, let’s go over “Love and Theft” (yes, the quotation marks are part of the title, much like the comma in TV on the Radio’s Dear Science,) by the numbers: it holds a score of 93 on Metacritic and placed on a few year-end lists, but most critics and fans seem to prefer his next album, 2006’s Modern Times, over this one. Also, “Love and Theft” has the unfortunate honor of being released on September 11th, 2001. Other albums with this distinction include Jay-Z’s The Blueprint, Ben Folds’s Rockin’ The Suburbs, and the soundtrack to Glitter. I’d make a joke here, but (1) it’s 9/11 we’re talking about and (2) you probably know where I was going with that line of thinking anyway.
Last week, I said that I couldn’t remember why I had put “Love and Theft” aside for so long. Within the first ten seconds of opening track “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum”, the mystery was solved. I don’t know if Dylan could have chosen a worse opening track than “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum”—the story is dull, half of the lyrics consist of lame rhymes and rhyming schemes (at one point, he rhymes “Dee” with “me”, “knee”, and, um, “Dee”), and the song has little variation with its instrumentation, a damning flaw for a song that is almost five minutes long. If there is something redeemable in this song, it is hidden far too well for me to be arsed to find it.
The rest of the album is…well, I’ll just say it: it’s a Bob Dylan album, and I’m sure that you’ve already made up your mind as to whether or not that’s a good thing. If you hate Bob Dylan, you’ll find plenty else to hate here, as he sings in his usual voice and his songwriting here is almost identical to the work he was doing in the 1960’s. If you love Bob Dylan, you’ll probably enjoy “Love and Theft” for the same reasons. I don’t love or hate Dylan, but I can see both sides of the argument.
For what it’s worth, much of the rest of the album features the same sort of lame rhyming schemes that I harped about with the opening track, but it gets easier to digest as you go along. It might be because the composition of the songs improve dramatically after that opening track, or it might be because Dylan sounds infinitely more comfortable singing tunes like “Mississippi” and “Moonlight” than “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum”, but objectively speaking, the rest of the album features quite a bit of good stuff.
Actually, it features good stuff if you can tolerate Dylan’s voice and style. I suppose there’s no getting around that obstacle, so if you don’t like Dylan’s music, this album won’t change your mind. At the same time, though, I can’t say that “Love and Theft” deserves its acclaim, and that’s not just because the bar is set too high. Simply put, the album has a lot of good songs, but only its closing track, “Sugar Baby”, really impressed me, and one great song does not an album make. It’s not lacking in enough areas that I can’t give it a pass, but “Love and Theft” isn’t the masterpiece that some people say it is. It’s good, but it’s not that good.
VERDICT: OWN
You know, going into this month, I had hoped to take apart some truly beloved albums, but all I've done is hand out backhanded praise. Where's the stuff that should have me in a rage, frustrated that I bought into the hype machine? Where's the stuff that I praised at the time but haven't given a second thought since? Where is—
...this is going to be fun.
Well, I would have to respectfully stand apart from you on this one. I think it will be (unfortunately) Dyaln's last great album. If, for no other reason, the band around him is salting the Earth behind them. Charlie Sexton plays some downright mean blues guitar on this record. I also thought "High Water" and the version of "Mississippi" on this record are highlights of this phase in his career. But I can understand a lot of negative reaction to the record being as it immediately followed a Daniel Lanois collaboration and was partially meant to be the opposite type of record. I would probably take the same position as you on the two Dylan albums that followed this one.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Chris Bell re: "Love and Theft." I think it features the absolute best band that Dylan ever recorded (and toured) with plus it has a consistently strong set of songs. I think it is one of his best albums of his entire career period, not just of his late period (or whatever). I've listened to it dozens of times and still here new and subtle things. And I think "Tweelde Dee & Tweedle Dum" is a fantastic opening track with lyrical lines that match the vocals perfectly. I love Dylan and have listened closely to nearly everything he's done so I'm inclined to be more sympathetic I guess. But I can still acknowledge that he has put out some sub-par work. "Love & Theft" however is a masterpiece in my opinion and far above Together Through Life, which received a lot more attention I think.
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