The 1980s were a bust for Bob Dylan. He’d been here before, having endured a fallow period before coming out with the excellent and tumultuous Blood on the Tracks. So maybe he could perform the same feat again. But more than five years had gone by since Dylan had recorded any new material. There was a greatest-hits album, an MTV Unplugged album and some traditional-folk albums. Yet he seemed to be fading into one of those dwarf stars that overpopulate the American celebrity firmament. Then one winter, he got snowed in on his Minnesota farm and began to write new songs, and before anyone knew it, he had created 1997’s Time out of Mind, one of his best albums ever all over again, atmospheric and full of sly observations. The man is sorta unstoppable.