T Bone Burnett wants you to know who he is. He wants you to know that he isn’t just an esteemed producer and collaborator for artists like Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Roy Orbison, Ry Cooder, and Ralph Stanley; and he certainly isn’t the beard-stroking archivist type a lot of us probably began to envision him as in the fourteen years since his last record, during which he became better known than ever for his production and soundtrack work (think O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Cold Mountain) than for his own music. Perhaps that’s why the simultaneous release of these two discs, a retrospective and a brand new album, has been given such hefty meaning by Burnett himself, who in his liner notes to the retrospective referred to the T Bone of 1972 to 1992 as “a dead man,” while the T Bone of 2006 and presumably beyond sets out to begin a new life “after forty years of wandering in the desert.” Perhaps this is just his way of clearing the air, getting out a blank slate, and at last, allowing the real T Bone Burnett to stand up.

Then again, perhaps not. Because the trouble with Burnett — and the trait which makes him so consistently fascinating — is his complexity; his seemingly absolute unwillingness to be second-guessed. One can see all the ingredients in this latest pronouncement, from the Old Testament symbolism of the number forty to the New Testament “born again” trope, of the enigma that is T Bone Burnett’s public persona: archaic, prophetic, willfully obscure, like a traveler from the distant past and the distant future all at once. His categorical summation of the first twenty years of his career, and his simultaneous teasing at the concept of identity, dares us to dig into these records and find out who he really is. But does this rabbit hole lead anywhere, or is it just another riddle within a riddle?

Let’s start with the basics: T Bone Burnett is a staggeringly versatile artist. For proof of that fact, one need look no further than the first disc of Twenty Twenty. Sure, there’s plenty of the austere Americana one might expect from the guy behind Down from the Mountain; but there’s also everything from seething, tuneful quasi-New Wave (“Monkey Dance”) to stomping blues-rock (“Tear This Building Down”) to white reggae (the Alpha Band’s “Born in Captivity”), from the dark-hearted jangle pop of “Fatally Beautiful” to a whole load of atmospheric, ominous avant-roots music, calling to mind the Bob Dylan of Infidels and Time Out of Mind.

Okay, I said it; and now that the “D” word’s been uttered, I might as well go ahead and say that if one wanted to find a functional musical analogue or fellow-traveler for T Bone Burnett, Dylan would just about be it — and not only because Burnett first heightened his profile as one of the musical cast of thousands on Zimmy’s 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour. In fact, Burnett’s taste for verbose, cryptic, symbolism-ridden turns of phrase — as well as the occasional adenoidal sneer — make him for once a deserving recipient of the “New Dylan” award; though he’s nowhere near as accessible as the man behind “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” or “Like a Rolling Stone,” with a little effort T Bone Burnett can be every bit as compelling.

It would be a mistake, however, to merely cast Burnett as a poor (or even rich) man’s Dylan. Because, while the pair have about as much in common with one another as anyone can with such idiosyncratic artists, there’s little doubt in my mind that not even Bob “Self Portrait” Dylan would have had the balls to throw out a multi-lingual slice of baroque, Van Dyke Parks-arranged psychological pop opera like “Image,” just when his audience thought they had him pigeonholed. Yet that’s exactly what T Bone Burnett did; first on 1988′s sprawling The Talking Animals, and now again on Twenty Twenty. The song is an anomaly, but it’s undeniably captivating for it. It’s pretentious, but why must that word always have such negative connotations? The fact is, a song like “Image” is unlike virtually anything else in “rock” music, even within Burnett’s own discography; and for that reason, any hope of unpacking the heart of T Bone Burnett’s persona through his past accomplishments is once again foiled. The fact that the song in question is yet another rumination on the nature of identity and perception is just the delicious icing on the cake.

Listening to The True False Identity, however, one really gets the impression that the obfuscation of Burnett’s own identity is an intentional one. “Honesty is the most subversive of all disguises,” he intones during the ominous tribal rumble of “Hollywood Mecca of the Movies.” “I said goodbye a long time ago / You must not have heard me.” And while I’m not one to confuse the poet with the poetic persona, it’s hard not to read this as a direct address to the audience, even a statement of intent for The True False Identity as a whole. Here is the core of an ingenious record, Burnett’s most complex and fleshed-out investigation of the self yet; an album which drops facades by erecting entirely new ones, often more bewildering than the ones he’s given us before.

Take “Palestine, Texas”: a driving song with chanted, almost rapped lyrics over one of Burnett’s most vicious guitar grooves. The first two verses are all but impenetrable, conjuring characters who share the Rat Pack’s Christian names only to immediately discard them amidst oblique references to terrorism, Vietnam, and the Ku Klux Klan, then topping it off with a chorus which amounts to a vitriolic repetition of the title. But on the bridge, he drops the bomb in a big way: “Presidents come and Presidents go / They rise like smoke, they fall like snow / Do you believe the things you say / Your lofty thoughts are filled with hay.” Suddenly the lyrics cut with the same visceral impact as the music; Burnett’s usually cryptic pronouncements change course and rocket straight for the Oval Office. Almost before we get the chance to process this sleight of hand, however, the mask comes up again: “This version of the world will not be here long,” he announces. “It is already gone, it is already gone.” The prophet persona is back, but juxtaposed with the direct political condemnations of the preceding verse, the meaning of these words couldn’t be clearer. If this is the true face of T Bone Burnett, then his is the crimson-eyed visage of a vengeful god.

Except I don’t think The True False Identity represents the “real” T Bone Burnett at all; that much can be gleaned from just a glance at the title. What it does represent, to me, is just another manifestation of who Burnett has always been: not a prophet, a charlatan, or an angry deity, but a storyteller. Sometimes — as in opening track “Zombieland,” a the scathing critique of a complacent society — his stories are direct and immediate, with concrete positions and subjects. Sometimes — as in the surreal, vividly painted murder ballad “There Would Be Hell to Pay” — they are vague, image-oriented, profound in almost inexplicable ways. And then there are stories like “Hefner and Disney” on Twenty Twenty, which go beyond mystery and leap straight into bafflement. In a way, though, they’re all equally worthwhile — the only difference is a simple matter of whether the songs are in the first person, the second or the third.

On his latest release, of course, we see more of T Bone Burnett’s “second-person” side: these are fiery, pointed songs, raining down judgement on the current presidential administration and political situation as if it’s the culmination of all of Burnett’s previous stabs at the American condition. “Blinded By the Darkness,” the raging climax of the album, is an almost exhausting listen, as he drops all pretense and just lays it all down on the line; half-singing, half-shouting lyrics like “Do we want to inject the concept of sin / into the Constitution?” over the monotonous growl of a fuzz-drenched electric guitar. It sounds more like the work of an impassioned street corner preacher than a poet or a songwriter, but then, there’s always been a strain of that in Burnett’s work; his tendency toward overt finger-pointing is even cited by Bill Flanagan in his Twenty Twenty liner notes as a possible reason why 1983′s mostly third-person release Proof Through the Night still hasn’t seen the light of day on CD. But now, of course, T Bone is a new man, and in a sense the lyrical honesty of “Blinded By the Darkness” excites even as it frustrates. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and if this latest anti-Bush rant is unlikely to win over any opponents, his attempt to shake some sense into the public is admirable.

So where does this leave us? In a sense, not much farther from where we started. Newly-found frank political consciousness aside, T Bone Burnett remains an enigma to all but those closest to him; chances are that the closer you get, the less he looks like “T Bone” and the more he looks like the living, breathing human being Joseph Henry Burnett, who started playing and producing music when he reached college age and hasn’t (at least publicly) looked back. And when all is said and done, if Burnett’s latest record was meant to reveal more of himself as a person than before — which I doubt — it couldn’t be further off the mark; this is multi-layered, convoluted music, difficult and sharp around the edges, something like Tom Waits’ recent (and excellent) Real Gone in terms of approach, subject matter and probable audience appeal. Its significance as to Burnett’s identity is probably apparent only to Burnett himself, and its significance to our own identities won’t make itself felt without repeated listens.

Neither Twenty Twenty nor The True False Identity, then, hold the key to the great mystery of T Bone Burnett. But they do represent something which is in my opinion far more valuable: here are thirty years’ worth of work by one of the richest and most brilliant minds in music today. It may not always be the easiest pill to swallow; there’s a reason why Burnett rarely shows up on critics’ “Best Of” lists, and that’s because he has the audacity to challenge his listeners. But to let these three discs slip by, to refuse the challenge when it has never been laid before our eyes so purposefully, is to do a disservice to ourselves. Maybe T Bone isn’t “wandering in the desert” anymore with the rest of us; but with songs like these, whose footsteps better to follow than his?

Reviewed by Zach Hoskins