The first rumors of Bob Dylan's latest album sounded like jokes.

Dylan had managed to write and record an entirely new record less than a year after his last release (a sterling collection of recent rarities called Tell Tale Signs). Every song featured an accordion. And to top it off, the legendary lyricist had enlisted the help of a co-writer.

Impossible, surely. And entirely true.

Together Through Life appeared late last month, and a quick listen confirms every one of those wacky rumors. It is, indeed, an entirely new Dylan album (although notably shorter than recent masterworks Love and Theft and Modern Times). David Hidalgo of California band Los Lobos provides accordion throughout

the album. And Robert Hunter, longtime lyricist for Grateful Dead, pitches in to help Dylan with lyrics to nine of the album's 10 songs.

Despite these unusual factors, the record works. It's loose, funny and unpretentious. Hidalgo adds a dash of Tex-Mex swing. Guitarist Mike Campbell, on loan from Tom Petty's Heartbreakers, plays a searing blues guitar. Dylan contributes rudimentary organ and his trademark rasp.

The songs don't rise to the level of Dylan's best from the last decade, but they don't aspire to. "My Wife's Hometown" and "Shake Shake Mama" reprise familiar blues tropes, but Dylan has so much fun, and the playing hits such a groove, that deep lyrical analysis misses the point.

"Life is Hard" and "This Dream of You" come from the other end of the spectrum. Both lyrical, crooner-style ballads sound like they were recorded in the 1930s and only recently rediscovered. Dylan doesn't sound like Bing Crosby or Edith Piaf, true enough, but it's not for lack of effort.

Blues and genre exercises aside, Together Through Life offers tantalizing glimpses of the "real" Dylan, too. You know, the voice-of-a-generation, literary icon Dylan. "Forgetful Heart," the album's masterpiece, uses a few simple lines to shattering effect. "The door is closed forevermore / If indeed there ever was a door," Dylan sings.

And on the album's closing track, "It's All Good," Dylan manages to combine the album's freewheeling instrumental attack with a few sharply observed stanzas on the world's imminent collapse. "Well widows cry, the orphans plea / Everywhere you look there's more misery," he sings. Grim stuff.

But the song keeps returning to its chorus and title: "It's all good / It's all good." And behind the litany of pain, Dylan's band plays enthusiastic zydeco riffs.

So maybe, just maybe, the joke's on us.