Record review: Jakob Dylan, "Seeing Things"
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By L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / GZO
3½ stars
It must be tough being the offspring of a legend and trying to make your own way in the wonderful world of music — see Julian and Sean Lennon and the Wilson sisters for prime examples of kids who got some notice, then rapidly faded away.
To his credit, Jakob Dylan has carved out a solid career fronting pop-rockers The Wallflowers, hardly critical favorites but good sellers nonetheless. Now he’s gone solo, via the Rick Rubin method.
Rubin, as you might recall, revitalized Johnny Cash’s career with a series of stripped-down recordings made in the last decade of the Man in Black’s life and has recently done the same with Neil Diamond. But the stripped-down setting is just asking for Jakob to be compared to his dad and, as a lyricist, he comes up well short of that impossible-to-meet standard.
The music here is acoustic, the sound most easily labeled folk. And Jakob isn’t a bad singer, with a far smoother, richer voice than papa. But with some exceptions — the opener “Evil Is Alive And Well” and the poppy “Something Good This Way Comes” spring to mind — most of the songs don’t have much punch.
That leaves “Seeing Things” as a pleasant enough record but one that quickly slips into background music mode.
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