This old Christgau essay, touching on The Basement Tapes and Blood on the Tracks, acknowledges why Bob Dylan is one of those rare great artists I love beyond measure but whom I don't play very often:

Unlike many people I admire, I've never played my Dylan records repeatedly or even regularly. Their conceptual strictness has discouraged both easy listening--even Nashville Skyline, for all its calculated pleasantness, never fit smoothly into my days--and full personal identification. And so the listener in me subconsciously vetoes the critic; there are times when I crave a specific Dylan record with a fervor of the will no other artist can arouse in me, and I value him immensely for that, but only rarely can he just be part of a stack. Lacking the totally committed professionalism of meaningful/listenable masterpieces like Layla and Exile on Main Street, Blood on the Tracks fails to achieve what I suspect was intended for it--a place in the stack with just such records, all of which it melts or freezes just because it is so distinctively Dylan.

Exactly. I can't remember the last time I played Bringing it All Back Home or Blonde on Blonde; even Blood on the Tracks, my favorite Dylan, gets played as often as Joy Division; "Buckets of Rain" wrings me much like "Decades" does, which means I don't play either of them often.

I play Planet Waves, Empire Burlesque, Shot of Love, and Infidels more than the recognized masterpieces (really). A couple of those are, like, really awful records, but with great songs you gotta unearth. Is it worth the effort? Depends. You don't have to mourn the loss of gestalt, and serious ponderin' about L-O-V-E; you enjoy them like the company of a best friend you don't see very often, with equal parts irritation and affection. For the same reasons I prefer the giddy, perky Love & Theft to the self-conscious solemnity and murk of Time Out of Mind. Good comedy is more aesthetically satisfying than tragedy. And murk wins Grammys.