Women + Country - Jakob Dylan

Women + Country

Jakob Dylan
Columbia/Sony Records.

SCQ Rating: 67%

Seeing Things wasn’t just a surprise favourite for me in 2008, it was the return of a ghost I’d kept as company years earlier, one I abandoned after the MOR blandness known as Rebel, Sweetheart. More than a folk record, Seeing Things wiped the board clean – no more band, no more radio-play anxiety – and by sounding entirely timeless, those ten stripped-back songs presented Jakob Dylan as the heir to a genre he’d spent the past decade running from. It wasn’t a masterpiece – hell, it didn’t need to be – but Seeing Things was a poignant display of Dylan’s best strength: intimate storytelling that dabbled in light and shade, family and nation.

In that respect, Women + Country may seem like a predictable follow-up, with Dylan’s protagonist still doubling between famished farmer and everyman soldier, but it isn’t. Trading Rick Rubin’s minimalist approach for T Bone Burnett’s arsenal of session-players, this sophomore solo effort boldly announces itself as an almanac of last century’s Americana, with ancient stabs of ragged rhythm guitar (‘Standing Eight Count’) and brass-stomping Louisiana blues (‘Lend a Hand’). Although no one would question his impressive contributions to the Wallflowers’ break-out Bringing Down the Horse, Burnett seems oblivious to the subtleties of Dylan’s recent direction and what made Seeing Things tick. Dylan’s voice hasn’t thinned, he’s simply found more effective ways of deepening his lyrics through intonation, and some of Burnett’s heavy-handed arrangements smother that intimacy. A jaunty saloon-esque piano may lend promise to ‘They’ve Trapped Us Boys’ but its two-note bass strut – as if prepped for early Johnny Cash - challenges Dylan’s rasp. When wielded sympathetically, however, Burnett’s embellishments create a lush backdrop for ‘Nothing But the Whole Wide World’ or weary-eyed country on ‘Truth For a Truth’.

It isn’t just the haphazard arrangements shaping this disc’s destiny. As the origin of Women + Country goes, Burnett tested Dylan to write ten songs in the vein of ‘Nothing But the Whole Wide World’, a previously recorded track for Glen Campbell. Now if there’s one aspect to songwriting you shouldn’t rush, it’s probably the song-structure underlying all the bells and whistles, right? Well, that emphasis on speed-writing accounts for some of Women + Country’s sketch-like moments. Although much of the record’s second-half tends to drag, the hollowing-out point is reached on ‘Smile When You Call Me That’; an exhausted, middle-of-the-road country song that makes a convincing caricature of Dylan and Co. as a burnt-out bar-band. Never has Dylan written a song so similar to an Uncle Kracker tune.

For all the tricks up its sleeve (Neko Case, where are you?), Women + Country has surprisingly little to say. That isn’t to imply it’s at all unlistenable or aggravating. In my books, a change in direction is always commendable and the partnership of Dylan and Burnett has certainly crafted a singular statement – swampier, mustier even, than Seeing Things. But this serves better as an Americana fix than as a good Jakob Dylan album, in no small part because the production outshines the songs.

Seeing Things - Jakob Dylan

Seeing Things

Jakob Dylan
Columbia Records.

SCQ Rating: 75%

Anyone who has closely followed Jakob Dylan’s output from his duties as lone-songwriter/vocalist/ guitarist of the Wallflowers saw this coming a mile away. From their breakthrough, Bringing Down the Horse, to their review-unworthy Rebel, Sweetheart, Jakob sounded most at home on the hushed folk songs that litter the Wallflowers discography. You name it: ‘Josephine’, ‘Three Marlenas’, ‘Mourning Train’, and ‘Up From Under’ were all tender reminders that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and although Dylan tried his hand at studio experiments (on Red Letter Days) and straight-on radio rock, the results often seemed nearly spiteful of what Jakob was meant to be: a folk singer. So after three years of silence, Dylan Jr. re-emerges with a humble set of sparse tunes, heartfelt and delicate, with Rick Rubin at the production helm.

Although opener ‘Evil is Alive and Well’ offers little lyrical insight beyond its title, it sets a somber tone of lonely acoustic guitar, the echoes of a second six-string, and Dylan’s voice so front and center, you can hear every grain in his aching. Moreover, ‘Evil is Alive…’ cleans the slate, closing the door on the last of the Wallflowers’ easy-listening, lite-rock and introducing a gritty collection that finds Dylan among his blue-collar heroes and singing songs that get people through the day. His lyrics praise the workingman’s pride as often as it derails the current political picture in America, but details are thankfully scarce in the latter subject, allowing Seeing Things to merely make mention to the troubled times we live in and skip the ill-advised scope of a ‘political album’. And while ‘Valley of the Low Sun’ and the bluesy ‘All Day and All Night’ offer refreshing comparison points to the Springsteen spirit, Seeing Things gets stronger in its second half, with the back-to-back sunshine of ‘War is Kind’ and ‘Something Good This Way Comes’.

What strikes me deepest about this album, and its distance from Dylan’s Wallflowers range, isn’t the material itself but its delivery. Many of these compositions are typical Jakob Dylan fare, accomplished but content in their general restlessness, but what makes Seeing Things Dylan’s finest collection of songs since 2000’s Breach lies in Dylan’s growth as an artist. While listening to ‘Will It Grow’ for the first time, I realized that Dylan couldn’t have sang it ten years ago, when the Wallflowers were at the top of alternative rock charts. He simply didn’t have the vocal chops or vision to see a song of that caliber’s through to completion. And perhaps he needed to feel the abandon of Rebel, Sweetheart’s creative dead-end (assisted handily by Brenden O'Brien in one of the lamest production jobs I’ve heard) to realize he should set out on his own with Rubin providing his less-is-more aesthetic. Whatever Dylan’s reasoning, Seeing Things benefits from those key decisions and feels like the prodigal son returning, more than it really deserves.