Bob Dylan’s Tell Tale Signs: Volume Eight of the Bootleg Series is Rolling Stone’s second best album of the year:

This is one of Dylan’s most consistently gripping albums, even though it is a roundup of outtakes and orphaned songs, many cut for the haunted triumphs Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind. Like any night on his Never Ending Tour, each track is a fresh portrait of Dylan at the crossroads, cutting new roads in rhyme, tempo and emotional emphasis: the introspection of “Most of the Time,” the looming apocalypse of “Ring Them Bells” and the heavy weight of “Ain’t Talkin’.” The veering tempers of Dylan’s medicine- rattle rasp are a wonder to themselves. His enraged growl in the piano demo of “Dignity” — “In the next room a man fightin’ with his wife/Over dignity” — sounds like he’s ready to jump right in.

Essentially, Bob Dylan is so good, even the shit he leaves off his albums is better than what everyone else releases on purpose.

Trevor Timm is a Blast Magazine staff writer