Seeing Things

Rock musician with traditional views

To be a son of a famous musician, especially such influential one as Bob Dylan, may be a pretty heavy burden for independent performer. You must be ready to meet both extreme skepticism and high expectations from the audience you are trying to embrace. In the case of Jakob Dylan, the youngest of Bob Dylan's sons, this situation was even harder because his artistic tastes lie in approximately the same musical profile. Thereby he has to appeal to the same audience. He doesn't play metal and he doesn't play electronica he is a rock musician with a pretty traditional views upon this genre. Of course, modern musical trends are not alien to him - it is no coincidence that his band The Wallflowers was once called the Dire Straits of Alternative Nation - but judging by his first solo album Seeing Things, which was released this year, acoustic folk rock is really what he wants to play.

Natural vibrations of Seeing Things

Seeing Things is an acoustic album in the most direct sense of this phrase. Calm, quiet and reflective – it has no sounds that could be considered unnatural at all, only voice and acoustic guitar, rhythm section appears too but quite rarely. Stylistic, as you have probably guessed, is traditionally American – that is folk and soft white blues. The atmosphere of the songs looks accordingly. Light sadness and purely American romantic halo. Each of the ten songs represented here sound absolutely unpretentious, modest and very intimate. It must be said that the production work over the album was handled by no other than Rick Rubin who dedicated a lot of efforts to remastering and recording songs of such legendary musicians as Johnny Cash, Tom Petty and Neil Diamond. His main approach lies in that he focuses listener's attention at the singer's voice leaving a small room for instrumentation. No effects, no presets - just natural vibrations. The same technique was also applied to Jakob Dylan's material so if you heard Cash's American Records or Diamond's recent album than you can easily imagine how Seeing Things sounds in terms of production work.

Jakob Dylan's advantages

Since the talk turned to legendary "old guys" it wouldn't be out of place to compare Seeing Things with their works. After all, Jakob Dylan writes his songs in the very same vein as they do. There is no sense in mentioning their milestone records since they are universally recognized masterpieces. Let's dwell upon their latest releases. In particular, Neil Diamond's Home Before Dark sounds a little bit too turbulent in comparison with Seeing Things. While Diamond continually tries to revive the customs of the old days now and again filling songs with intensive strumming, Jakob sticks to even-tempered performance, thus making a perfect match of shape and sound. A track called All Day All Night may be a really good example. Bob Dylan's Modern Times also sounds a little bit more intensive and definitely much more vintage. The good thing about Seeing Things is that it doesn't sound extremely retro. It features fully adequate sounding and performance - it is not moth-eaten. This is a disputable question if Jakob sounds better or not but on the whole Seeing Things looks worthy indeed. Jackob's definite advantage is his age. In comparison with worn out voices of his musical mentors his vocal looks much more appealing. So if you like acoustic folklues than Seeing Things may become this year's best choice for you.