"I pay in blood," growls Bob Dylan on his first album since Christmas in the Heart in 2009, "but not my own..." This Dylan is the fire-and-brimstone version, a figure who's not just steeped in the country blues and old murder ballads but a character from one of them. But the wind keeps blowing in different directions on Tempest: it begins with the breezy Duquesne Whistle, blows harder on Early Roman Kings, howls with longing on Roll on John, a tribute to John Lennon. Elsewhere, he borrows from the Carter Family to tell of the sinking of the Titanic but manages, too, to namecheck Leo DiCaprio. It's his strongest album since Love and Theft in 2001, and still there's no pinning him down.