I bought (Breach) in the fall of 2000 and ignored it until a year later, when I left the comfortable abode of my parent’s rule and wandered half-prepared into the structure-less, free-for-all that is university residence. I’d lost all my bearings – that much was clear – and the Wallflowers’ third outing (and the critical first since Bringing Down the Horse made them household names) became my coping mechanism. Getting lost on campus or – damn – on the way to campus never stung as badly while listening to Jakob Dylan wander his own desolate Middle-America, and trying to make sense of my new blank-slate identity was easier with Dylan’s endless self-mythologizing (his countless self-appropriations in ‘I’ve Been Delivered’, no surprise, became the swansong of my adolescence). As indebted to shellshock celebrity as it is to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, (Breach) is the Wallflowers’ best statement and, sadly, their last stand before chasing the ghosts of their radio-rock heyday into retirement.
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