Roger McGuinn's work has been so closely associated with Dylan's that it comes as no surprise, but with all the excitement of an inevitable triumph, that the Rolling Thunder Revue has revived his career. By almost all accounts, McGuinn has been the most impressive of Dylan's coperformers on the RTR tour. Cardiff Rose more than confirms that; it is McGuinn's finest album since he disbanded the...

Roger McGuinn has loved gadget songs ever since he discovered that an electric twelve-string could give a folkish guitar strum a rock & roll jangle. "Car Phone," the tech tune from Back From Rio, his first album in a decade, connects when McGuinn's Rickenbacker runs down the same modal path it did on the Byrds' epochal "Eight Miles High" and then concludes with a hokey conversation via the title...