Rating: 5/5 DOES BOB DYLAN HAVE a wizened Romani palm reader on call? His timing is uncanny. In the midst of a global pandemic, he’s released a new album – his first collection of new compositions in eight years. It’s not merely the novelty of new Bob songs that offers comfort in this black swan moment, it’s a set of songs that provides inspiration when it’s in short supply. Call it a vaccine against culture’s shrinking expectations and the subsequent sapping of spirit. or just call it great music. The unifying theme for his 39th studio album is that Homo sapiens are a rough and rowdy species: self-destructive at our worst, wired for survival and transcendence at our best. In Mother of Muses he gives credit for creative spark to General George Patton, Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King as “heroes who stood alone”, while I Contain Multitudes is a solemn litany of our strengths and weaknesses: Anne Frank, Beethoven and William Blake; bling, blood feuds, and “British bad boys, The Rolling Stones.”