Jakob Dylan: The Sound It Is A-Changin’

Seeing Things
Jakob Dylan
(Columbia)

I’ve always admired Jakob Dylan. Because whether or not you like his music, you have to admit he has guts. It’s hard enough for a guy (or gal) with a guitar and a set of songs to make it in the music business. If you’re Bob Dylan’s son, the expectations alone would make such a career choice daunting. Even if his name opened a few doors, the pressure on Jakob surely was staggering.

The younger Dylan forged ahead, though, and earned success on his own terms. He formed The Wallflowers and modeled his sound more on Tom Petty than the old man. The Wallflowers’ second disc, 1996’s “Bringing Down The Horse,” went multi-platinum, produced four hits on the Billboard charts and won two Grammys.

After five albums as a frontman, Jakob Dylan has stepped out as a solo artist for the first time with the release of “Seeing Things.” He’s also left himself wide open to further comparisons with his father by making a stripped-down, largely acoustic album that arrives 45 years after “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” “Seeing Things” isn’t as good as that landmark album. That doesn’t mean the disc is bad, it just means Jakob Dylan is among legions of songwriters who fell short of that mark.

Dylan took his first acoustic effort seriously, enlisting Rick Rubin to produce. Rubin has become the go-to guy for stark, acoustic affairs, first with Johnny Cash’s American Recordings and then with the past two Neil Diamond discs. Less isn’t necessarily more for Dylan here. Though there are a few instrumental flourishes here and there, he would have been better served by beefier production, and some of those hooks that made The Wallflowers albums so great. “All Day and All Night” and “Something Good This Way Comes” have a bit of bounce to them, so it’s not as though Dylan left his pop sensibility completely behind.

There’s still plenty to like. Dylan has tapped into current events, both home and abroad, on “Evil Is Alive And Well,” “Valley Of The Low Sun” and “War is Kind.” In addition to the political, Dylan seems to be tapping into the personal on the album closer, “This End Of The Telescope”: “I was born in the summer of Sam / Smaller and sooner than planned / In the spitting image of a man / Raised by wolves on the fat of the land.” Of course, the song might not be autobiographical at all. But approaching it that way makes it an immediately engaging listen.

“Seeing Things” won’t make anyone forget Bob Dylan’s early albums. Nor does it outshine the best work of The Wallflowers. But the disc still is well above average, and is likely to grow on fans of The Man and the band. You have to give Jakob Dylan credit for going solo and stripping his songs bare for the world to see. But then again, he’s always had guts.