From their respective outposts on opposite coasts, Rory Block (east) and Jody Stecher (west), each a product of the mid-century folk revival, have been performing and recording for decades. Their albums are of remarkably consistent quality, and as a general principle -- perhaps cracked in what follows -- I recall none I don't like, for that matter any that I like more than others. (Well, Stecher's 1999 album Oh the Wind & Rain: Eleven Ballads, his exhumation of the roots of the roots, is in a category all its own.)

Stecher, who has often recorded with Kate Brislin, is so immersed in the traditions of folk, early country and bluegrass that he has fashioned a sound of his own. The same can be said of Block, respected for her fresh interpretations of downhome blues.

This time around, though, both have elected to do something different, not as in radical turnaround but as in a less rural, historical approach. In Stecher's case it's original material (eight of the dozen cuts on Mile 77, the number denoting his age) and a willingness to try a more contemporary sound from Boston's Mile Twelve, which bills itself as a "modern string band." Understand, this is all relative. It's not the equivalent of Dylan's going electric. The older sounds are there as influences in every nook and cranny; they're just not defining. Even so, fans may rest assured that just about everything they like about Stecher's musical personality is audible in some sense.

What Stecher has done most noticeably is to bring a songwriter's imagination into the equation, stretching out from the limitations of lyrics shaped by a world that, however much traditional music can bring it vividly to life, no longer exists. There are absurdist yarns, alongside life reflections and somber remembrances (among them "John-John" about the once-influential folksinger John Herald, who died under tragic circumstances). "Kaiser Bill," which plays cleverly on a line from "Cotton Eyed Joe," leads to comical but authentically philosophical conclusions. I was surprised to learn that "Second Sail" is not the movingly un-sappy love song I thought it was but, according to his liner notes, something else entirely. Then again, as I learned when I was writing songs, listeners may hear a message that never occurred to the creator, and that doesn't mean they're wrong. However taken, "Second Sail" is a first-rate song.

The album opens with a country-folk number from the initial years of the Austin school, Michael Martin Murphey and Charles Quarto's "Geronimo's Cadillac," whose narrative I think I understand after finally grasping its unexpected way of telling a prisoner's story. Less unexpected, however, is Stecher's misspelling of Murphey's last name. In his defense, nearly everybody does that. Anyway, I don't think I've been exposed to a version that sparkles more brightly.

My complaints about Block's Positively 4th Street have little to do with her or with her way of articulating a Dylan song. (The subtitle is "A Tribute to Bob Dylan.") My broadly sour feeling has nearly all to do with an exhaustion I began to experience a decade ago, when it came to me that Tempest (which I reviewed in this space on 6 October 2012), a perfect career-closer to my ears, was in fact not going to be Dylan's last album. I know that sounds like -- is -- lunatic presumption on my part, but as Dylan went on to release more new recordings, I was hearing, perhaps all by myself, somebody dwelling amid past glories while serving fans who continue to hail him as a genius who just won't stop. Myself, I stopped listening to Dylan, though not before picking up his most recent, Rough & Rowdy Ways, which made all of one spin -- or most of it, anyway -- on the music machine in my office before being placed on the shelf to live on in silence. I could only think of other songwriters I like more. Never thought that would happen. But really, as far as I can trust my ears and my brain (yours, of course, may disagree), it's just not all that engaging a record.

Block borrows "Murder Most Foul," a 20-minute-long endurance contest. It caused me to revisit my first response when I encountered it on the internet prior to its formal release. It was that I would never listen to it again. OK, I did stick with it two or three minutes into Block's cover, placed fortunately at the last, before lamenting how far Dylan had fallen as a social and political prophet. The wise man who wrote "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" now provides conspiracy theories to an already conspiracy-addled nation. Thanks a lot, Bob.

Perhaps to please her fan base, some of which she says wanted a Dylan album from her, Block turns to chestnuts such as the title cut and "Like a Rolling Stone," which though powerful in their time (for example to this adolescent who thought it was cool to be mad at everybody for failing to appreciate his superior wisdom) have not aged well. They might be described as rants set -- however thinly -- to music, and this listener just wishes this obnoxious drunk would shut up. "Mr. Tambourine Man" remains as good as it ever was, except tattered from decades of repetition. Still....

"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" is a marvel in all the ways a marvel can manifest in the world. Probably nobody but Dylan could have drawn a narrative of this imaginative power out of the medieval ballad "Lord Randal." Surely it would have occurred to nobody else. "Randal" tells a shocking tale in its own right (though not about the end of the world), and it remains a cultural artifact centuries after its anonymous creation. Yet "Hard Rain" may be around even longer; whenever it is sung, it will be frighteningly of the moment. Not surprisingly, Block lives up to the ballad's dark atmospheric demands. Many who have sung it have not.

As I listen to some of Dylan's middle-period and later compositions treated here, I agree against all my grouchiest convictions that those who praise Dylan as a world-class songwriter are not always shoveling offal. If not as celebrated as others, "Everything is Broken," "Ring Them Bells" and "Not Dark Yet" represent the craft at a mountainous level. If I were to advance one criticism of Block, which I do with reluctance, it's that I wish there were more of these on these grooves. That's just me, of course, and taste is always personal, and I don't have to heed the desires of fans. Through it all, Rory Block maintains the voice and the soul.