With his 68th birthday less than a month away, Bob Dylan [ask your dad] today releases Together Through Life, his 33rd studio album. Early chatter from devoted fans was mainly positive, but the reviews are finally in. How are they? Remarkably consistent!

• "Mr. Dylan's extraordinary voice surrounds you as a croak and a bark, scoured and grotesque."

• "'I'm listening to Billie Joe Shaver/ I'm reading James Joyce/ Some people tell me I've got the blood of the land in my voice,' he croaks on 'I Feel a Change Comin' On'."

• "No instrument other than Dylan's apocalyptic croak could better suit the world-weary, at times romantic, often forlorn, twilight tales of Together Through Life."

• "[I]t's not the frog croak voice or the aged whine or any tumbling tumbleweed tunes that make the troubadour sound ancient on much of his outstanding new album, Together Through Life."

• "Dylan's shattered voice is high in the mix, crooning and croaking like a bullfrog impersonating Dean Martin."

• "Dylan is the greatest poet songwriter of the modern era. In his 68th year (on his 33rd studio album) we continue to pay revenant attention, even though he wheezes and croaks, offers up Tin Pan Alley rhymes and oft-used melodies."

• "By the end, I was listening more to that strange whispery croak of a voice than to the words themselves."

• "Dylan's tattered, croaking voice looms over the dusty grooves like a dark storm cloud."

• "The habit that turned his Blowin' In The Wind voice of a generation from nasal whine into chesty croak will surely be the death of him."

• "On the surface this sounds like decent Dylan – bluesy riffs, mournful accordions and folksy croaking – but the lyrical sharpness is missing."

• "'Well now, what's the use in dreaming?/ You've got better things to do/ Dreams never did work for me anyway/ Even when they did come true,' Dylan sings (or, more appropriately, croaks)."

• "On this mostly good CD, the depressingly bleak lost love song "Life Is Hard" – wherein Bob croaks wearily – is a bad fit with the other tracks on the record."

Jesus Christ, what's a guy gotta do to get a "rasps" around here?