The youthful subject of A Complete Unknown, which closes with him "going electric" at Newport as the culmination of a rainbow arc that began in monochrome, distant Minnesota, is currently lightly treading the boards across Europe’s arenas, concert halls and theatres.

I come to this album from a week or so spent among the denizens of the New York and Boston folk revivals, including a key figure from Tulsa and the Guthrie Center, and a concert (Judy Collins, marking 85 years of music and activism).

Being unknowable has been almost as much of a preoccupation for the erstwhile Robert Zimmerman as writing songs. Previously on film he has played the role of Alias in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, having first presented himself to the world under the alias of “Bob Dylan”.

Lighters at the ready, because here comes the flood. Drawn from 16-track tape, 1/4in reels and lo-fi sound board cassettes that are now a half century old, the 27 CDs of 431 performances, 417 of them previously unreleased, of Dylan and The Band’s 1974 arena tour of the US, is a set that challenges the listeners’ staying power perhaps more than it celebrates an epochal tour.

PJ Harvey never fails to deliver – much as I hate that over-used word, the go-to assurance from politicians who promise the earth and dump nothing but shit. With Polly Harvey, she reaches into the unknown, true to her creative impulses, and oblivious to fashion.

Cat Power, aka singer-songwriter Chan Marshall, is releasing her first live album – a recording of the faithful recreation of Bob Dylan’s infamous gig of 1966, played in November 2022 at the Royal Albert Hall.

Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom first crossed our paths in July 2021, his first streaming event, and coming little more than a year after the garden of unearthly delights that was Rough and Rowdy Ways. To enter this kingdom, you were given a key code for $25, and allowed fifty minutes, 13 songs, and the chance to revisit over the following 48 hours.

The 1997 release of Time Out of Mind was the resurrection of an artist who appeared to have wandered off the reservation some years before, lost in transit on his Never Ending Tour, trailed by an army of "Bobcats" who followed him for show after grinding show. “How can you stand it?” he once asked of a woman who told him she’d seen dozens of NET gigs.

I am a sucker for Malian singers. I have been ever since I made a couple of films there at the end of the 1980s. According to ancient tradition, the jalis, and other singers have a mission: to open the hearts of those who hear them, and to fill them with healing and courage. Thirty years on, Rokia Koné keeps the flame going and touches me in the same way.

Some years after Chronicles (2004) a book that broke moulds and delighted with its originality, and as with albums that often came with changes of attitude and style, Bob Dylan's "philosophy" comes as something of a surprise.