Bob Dylan's latest album is better than previous attempts

A famous Bruce Davidson photograph serves as the album cover for Bob Dylan's latest studio album "Together Through Life," his 33rd full album for Columbia. The black and white shot has a man and women embracing in the backseat of a car with the road running up above them in the back window.

The shot masterfully cuts part of the bodies' actions and the two lovers shadow each other's identities. The passion, sense of adventure, and carelessness for the world outside each other can all be identified from the shot. It could have almost have been taken from Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" and the free-spirited adventure that post-war America had for some that wanted to experience life differently. The two in Davidson's shot are living in the moment.

"Together Through Life" has many of these moments. To pigeonhole the album, it is an optimistic upswing from "Modern Times" or "Time Out of Mind," Dylan's 2006 and 1997 releases respectively where the singer's songs were particularly down and out, would be missing out on the despair and the prophetic suspicion that is also on the album. Dylan brings the whole story.

He said he loved the sound of the recordings of Sun and Chess records in the 1950s and early 1960s, and he tried to achieve that sound with "Together Through Life." He does so in a way, with his own twist. The album's balance makes these bluesy numbers feel less cacophonous and drastic as he did originally on his past two albums. It comes out more subversively. The sound is more stripped and the electric guitar is less prominent in this batch of songs. Also, an accordion receives prominent placement in the mix played by Los Lobos' David Hidalgo.

Dylan's backing band keeps his voice at the foreground, gracefully rasping yet annunciating impeccably. Dylan sounds like he is being backed by The Dap Kings on the salsa- blues fusion of "Beyond Hear Lies Nothin'." It sounds fresh and danceable.

Working with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter may have helped breathe new life into his career, or at least offer another prospective for his own inspiration. Dylan did the same thing in 1975 when he was working on "Desire" with Jaques Levy. Many of the tautologies and non-sequitors that recently began frequenting his songs are gone. They seemed comedic, and it seemed like he was forcing rhymes. (I been to St. Herman's church and I've said my religious vows/ I've sucked the milk out of a thousand cows).

"Life is for love," Dylan sings on "I Feel a Change Coming On." Relaxed and sage, Dylan does not need a feigning culmination to his career on record as he nears his 68th birthday. Originality and "being constantly in the state of becoming" are far more important to Dylan. He really has been together with his listeners through life. He takes you "from the cradle to the grave" as Bono once put it.

"Together Through Life" is another impressive outing in an unprecedented career with songs serving as little snapshots into an unfiltered and romantic view of life.