Sunday, December 14, 2008

#14 Album of 2008: Seeing Things - Jakob Dylan







Seeing Things

Jakob Dylan
Columbia Records.



God was I bored at work… surfing the undercurrents of music criticism, sampling forgettable records and staring out windows when I caught a review for Jakob Dylan’s rumoured solo album. After the dreadfulness of the Wallflower’s last offering, the loathsome Rebel, Sweetheart, I cannot in hindsight pretend Seeing Things was on my to-buy radar at all. Forty minutes through his Myspace stream and it was clear: in traveling the folk troubadour route, Dylan has made the best decision of his career since getting T-Bone Burnett to produce their breakthrough twelve years ago. It’s delicately unfurling but hard-fought in its blue-collar approach to living off the land, far from the limelight and trimmings of California, and as detailed in ‘Something Good This Way Comes’, finding home on the backwoods horizon of Americana.

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