When news leaked earlier this year that Bob Dylan was rehearsing his band to record his first collection of new songs since 2001’s “Love and Theft,” a close friend called it, with only the smallest amount of irony, “something to live for.” Not just for us ever-ardent admirers, I thought, but for the man himself.

After all, the album that touched off Dylan’s fourth or fifth artistic renaissance, 1997’s “Time Out of Mind” had, more than one pundit pointed out, the tone of a morbid farewell note: “It’s not dark yet,” went one of its many memorable salutations, “but it’s getting there.”

Who knows what happened between “Time” and the comparatively buoyant and always generous “Love and Theft,” but it was obviously good for Dylan’s soul and ours: A songwriter and performer commonly defined by his blazing originality had settled comfortably into the lineage of true American music, taking the melodies and lyrics common to the prewar blues and traditional songs he had always cherished and championed and adding embellishments all his own. No longer was Dylan compelled or expected to blaze trails, only to keep his own free of the detritus that had cluttered his albums of the ’80s.

So close in sound and theme to its predecessor is “Modern Times” that it is certain to be labeled as “Love and Theft 2,” deservedly so and without that old sore-headed insinuation that Dylan is repeating himself.

Echoes of music made by Dylan’s musical forefathers and foremothers, from Blind Willie McTell to Memphis Minnie to the Carter Family, resound throughout the disc.

They are mostly of a piece and have not just passed the test of time. They have transcended it – as has “Blowin’ in the Wind,” written 44 years ago, and the 1981 hymn “Every Grain of Sand,” both of which could have been written in the 19th century or yesterday.

“Modern Times” songs like the rowdy, sexy blues “Rollin’ and Tumblin”‘ and the weary, worried “The Levee’s Gonna Break” have lyrics that could be written by no one but Bob Dylan. The latter, which could be construed as a response to Hurricane Katrina, has Dylan observing that people he sees “have barely enough skin to cover their bones.” Yet neither these nor the other songs here make any bones about being original in the usual sense of the word.

Dylan is no revivalist, despite his grouchy complaints about most modern music being worthless. He’s doing here what he’s always done, which is carving something of his own design from the best old wood he can find. With his voice pretty much shot as an instrument, he now depends on phrasing to make his lyrics bite, as on the wheezy album opener “Thunder on the Mountain.” He uses the same technique to seduce, as on the gentle, casual swing of “Beyond the Horizon” and the hillbilly waltz “When the Deal Goes Down,” on which he addresses mortality and beyond with something like optimism.

Dylan also maintains tradition by ending the album with a state-of-the-union summation. It’s titled “Ain’t Talkin,” but the songwriter is sure doing a lot of thinking as he walks through “the cities of the plague,” prompting him to rethink a lot of what’s been stated before. But even as he looks upon and curses a corrupted world that can savage even the best of men, he wonders whether he can still claim heavenly redemption. He’s got time: It’s not dark yet, and there is still a lot to live for.