Jakob Dylan
Women + Country

Being the son of such a renowned father in rock music helps up to a certain level, beyond which, if you don’t reveal your so-called attributes and something personal, it can risk becoming a double-edged sword that ruins a career, causing you to live the rest of your artistic life with the relentless specter of the illustrious parent hanging over your head.

Jakob Dylan knows this well, as he detached himself from the prophetic and cult-like figure of his father Bob from the onset with his rock band Wallflowers, seeking other paths and musical directions. Now, however, having reached his forties and especially artistic maturity, he ventures out alone and manages to release, within a couple of years, two works of notable American singer-songwriter character, delving into the sounds of old America that his father himself seems to have revived in his latest releases.

If the first “Seeing Things,” produced by Rick Rubin, was a sparse folk singer-songwriter work, stripped to the bone in sound as is the tradition of the bearded producer, this new “Women and Country” is enriched with new insights and colors. A good deal of the success of this new endeavor surely goes to producer and musician T-Bone Burnette (his recent productions of the Plant-Krauss duo or the latest Mellencamp are splendid), who succeeds in enriching the sound of the young Dylan’s compositions.
Songs like Lend a Hand, Everybody's Hurting, and the final Standing Eight Count, where the introduction of brass instruments steers the songs toward the reaches of Waits' unparalleled madness, and the female backing vocals of Neko Case and Kelly Hogan assist the good Jakob, becoming protagonists in some episodes of the record. More melodic but equally evocative are the initial Nothing but the Whole Wide World, Truth for a Truth, or the folkier They’ve Trapped Us Boys, reinforced by choruses that are easily assimilable.

Supported by top-notch musicians and with Marc Ribot, guitarist for Tom Waits no less, “Women and Country” strongly positions itself as the album that could launch Jakob Dylan's career. Conscious of the surname he carries, he has chosen the path of hard work to build his future. Where the solo debut was mystical and solitary, this is full of insights and sounds that seem to show the right path to follow, the one his father has already traced and traveled, one that has been populated for years by both bad and good followers.

Jakob, with this work, is a "good one."