News of the album first broke in a Rolling Stone article on March 4, 2009, the month before the album's release. Critic David Fricke described it as a "dark new disc with a bluesy border-town feel" and quoted a source close to Dylan's camp as saying the album "came as a surprise". A follow-up article in Rolling Stone on March 16 claimed the album contained "struggling love songs" and had little similarity to Dylan's previous album, 2006's Modern Times.
