Bob Dylan?s self-titled debut album first sucker-punched America in 1962. Now, 43 albums later, Dylan can still send a tornado through the heart of anyone with an open ear. His new album, accompanied by a tour that will hit Sacramento?s Memorial Auditorium Oct. 10, stands on pieces of music history and reinvents them with a highly charged simplicity that only Dylan can accomplish.

“Love and Theft,” the much-anticipated follow-up to the 1997 Grammy-winning “Time Out of Mind,” is a 12-song journey that blends the history of American music with the history of Dylan himself. With acid blues, grassroots country, 1960s classic Dylan rock and roll mixed with an unmistakably ironic sense of humor, the album weaves its way through Dylan?s fears of his past, his future and his mortality.

The slow, haunting “Mississippi” has Dylan admitting, “Your days are numbered, so are mine,” and “Time is piling up, we struggle and we stray.” The album continues to make sharply personal and somewhat painful revelations in “Bye and Bye,” “Lonesome Day Blues” and “Moonlight.” Still, the peak of the album comes with “Cry a While,” a tempo-changing blues song that torments listeners with feelings of elation followed by unbearable torment.

“Love and Theft” is nothing short of a masterpiece. Dylan has found success in evoking powerful emotions with honest poetry and straight forward sound. “Cry a While” claims that, “Some people ain?t human, they got no heart or soul.” Well, if those people listen to this album, they would find themselves well equipped with both.

4 stars out of 4