Jakob Dylan

With the Wallflowers on hiatus, singer-songwriter Jakob Dylan strikes out on his own. Seeing Things, a set of simple acoustic country folk songs, benefits from a far less cluttered instrumental setup than his Wallflowers days. Recalling his dad's bent imagery, some of the playfulness of John Prine, Tom Waits' interest in lost characters and Bruce Springsteen's quieter moments, Dylan seems eager (and able) to move out from the shadow of both his daunting lineage and the overhyped packaging of the earlier part of his career.

Jakob Dylan has big boots of Spanish leather to fill. "Evil Is Alive and Well," the opener of his
first solo album, finds him singing, "May be in a palace, it may be in the streets/May be here
among us on a crowded beach. . . . But evil is alive and well." He's echoing his father Bob's
1979 hit "Gotta Serve Somebody": "You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat
bread/You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-size bed/But you're g... More >