Either ways, these Bootleg Series albums go a long way towards salving the frustration of never having heard �Series Of Dreams� open 'Oh Mercy' for the first time, or �Blind Willie McTell� as the final dissolve on 'Infidels'. Nowadays such concerns might be a moot point: you can sequence the records to your own digital specs if you choose, but that doesn�t change the fact that Dylan has consistently queered the notion of any new album being heralded the equal of his mid-60s triptych by removing the centrepiece song. Maybe it�s his perverse version of the intentional flaw in the prayer mat, or Cohen�s crack that lets the light in.

Not every selection on 'Tell Tale Signs' is indispensable, but most are capable of silencing a crowded room (including a lovely slow blues take on �Mississippi� and an inspired revisiting of that masterpiece of heartache and regret, �Most Of The Time�, delivered here in a more robust harp-harness-and-guitar mode). In fact, at least half of the material on this double set can stand beside Dylan�s finest work. That much of it has been culled from his driest songwriting season (most of the 90s) as well as the millennial revivalist period, gives further cause for pause.

The brace of albums ('Good As I Been To You' and 'World Gone Wrong') on which he went back to the sacred texts of pre-war gospel, blues and folk standards not only allowed him to re-find his voice, but also a new (or rather, ancient) vocabulary and subject matter. Not just songs like �Red River Shore� (a glorious out-take from the 'Time Out Of Mind' sessions), or a chillingly committed rendition of Robert Johnson�s brutal �32-20 Blues�, or an unreleased beauty from December 2005 called �Can�t Escape From You�. There are also bristling, tough-skinned live versions of �High Water� (Song For Charley Patton)� and �Lonesome Day Blues�, plus a handful of superlative old-timey soundtrack tunes (�Huck�s Tune�, �Tell Ol� Bill�, the Civil War hymnal ��Cross The Green Mountain�).

And the difference between �Born In Time�, �Someday Baby� and �Can�t Wait� here and on their previously released incarnations is so marked, they could be different songs (the latter is a revelatory portrait of Dylan as a communicator of raw blues). Such apparently ad-hoc and on-the-spot recalibrations remind us that Dylan�s takes differ so radically from one to the next, it was but a wink in time that kept �Like A Rolling Stone� from being released � or maybe even binned � as a woozy player-piano saloon waltz.

So, here�s to another fascinating glimpse at Bob�s secret histories. This one will keep us quiet until Christmas.

One of Ireland�s foremost music and pop culture writers, Peter Murphy (b. 1968, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford) got a taste for journalism at the age of 17 when he won first place in an EU sponsored competition for young essayists. After ten days of being wined, dined and chauffeured around Europe on someone else�s tab, the only proviso being that he file a report at the end of it, he figured this was the way to live. But first, he had to get the rock �n� roll bug out of his system, and spent most of the next decade playing drums with a succession of bands. He quit music to become a journalist in 1996, quickly establishing himself as a senior contributor to Hot Press. Since then he has written over 30 cover stories for the magazine, accumulating a portfolio of interviews that includes Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Nick Cave, Willie Nelson, Radiohead, Public Enemy, Shane MacGowan, George Clinton, Sonic Youth, Television, Henry Rollins, PJ Harvey, Richard Hell, David Johansen, Warren Zevon, Wim Wenders, Iain Banks, Will Self, William Gibson, Billy Bob Thornton, FW De Klerk and many others. His work has also appeared in the Bloodaxe Books anthology Dublines, the Sunday Independent (Ireland) plus international publications such as Rolling Stone (Australia) and Request (US). Miscellaneous assignments include writing the programme notes for jazz legend Miles Davis� art exhibition hosted by the Davis Gallery in Dublin (2000), collaborations with cult author JT LeRoy for the American magazine Razor (2002), and co-producing Revelations, a two-hour radio documentary about The Frames (2003). He is frequently employed as a rent-a-mouth by the BBC and Irish national radio and television, is a contributor to the online archive Rocksbackpages.com and more recently gave a talk entitled Nocturnal Emissions at the ReJoyce symposium in the National College of Ireland, tracing the influence of James Joyce�s writings on Irish music. He has also been invited to contribute an essay to the liner notes of the 2004 remastered edition of Harry Smith�s Anthology Of American Folk Music. His debut novel, �John the Revelator� will be published by Faber in March 2008. A review of it can be found here