Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs

Bob Dylan's last three studio albums—1997's Time

Out of Mind,

2001's "Love and Theft", and 2006's Modern Times—are among his finest, but

that doesn't guarantee that their outtakes would add much to his legacy. But Tell

Tale Signs,

two CDs of scraps from those albums (along with some from 1989's Oh Mercy, plus some live

recordings) deserves to be considered an album, because it moves like one. Most

of these alternate takes are in fact completely different arrangements: "Someday

Baby" is a slow, wounded shuffle here, rather than the hard-chugging blues-rock

from Modern Times,

while two versions of Time's "Mississippi," each opening a CD, sound nothing

like the "official" rendition—or one another. It's easy to understand why

Dylan left some of these songs off the albums: The woozy "Born In Time"

wouldn't have fit the spookier tone of Oh Mercy, but it's got too much

life in it to have stayed put. But why "Dreamin' Of You," a shattered-love song

set to a hushed-roar arrangement, was left off Time is hard to figure. The

in-concert stuff provides snazzy contrast to the studio songs: "High Water (For

Charley Patton)" and "Lonesome Day Blues" crackle and snarl, with Dylan's lead

guitar speaking its own tongue. As Dylan's official bootlegs go, this is one of

the series' best.