The artist formerly known as Machine Gun Kelly announced his seventh album with a trailer narrated by…wait, is that really Bob Dylan?! “lost americana is a personal excavation of the American dream, a journey to find what’s been lost,” drawled the 84-year-old legend over clips of mgk smoking, riding motorcycles, and strolling the Vegas strip. “This album is a love letter to those who seek to rediscover: the dreamers, the drifters, the defiant. It’s a sonic map of forgotten places, a tribute to the spirit of reinvention, and a quest to reclaim the authentic essence of American freedom.” Some wondered whether it was AI, but no, Bob’s just a fan. (He inexplicably posted a no-context clip of a 2016 mgk performance to his Instagram stories earlier this year.) The 35-year-old is no stranger to the spirit of reinvention, having deftly transitioned over the course of his career from a gritty Cleveland rapper hustling mixtapes at the mall to the poster boy for the pop-punk revival. Where 2020’s Tickets to My Downfall and 2022’s Mainstream Sellout funneled his long-simmering angst into blink-182-esque riffs, on lost americana, he gets all James Dean: driving 135 MPH down a two-lane desert highway, chain-smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, heading nowhere fast. “Take me somewhere cheap/Where the livin’ is easy/Out of all their reach/Set my spirit free,” he sings on the Springsteen-esque “outlaw overture,” and on “cliché,” he coaxes a lover to ditch this two-bit town and get married in Vegas. He channels The Strokes on “sweet coraline” and interpolates Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” on “starman,” but returns to his hip-hop roots on songs like “indigo” and “treading water,” opening up on the latter about the long road to redemption after a troubled year.