The Wallflowers
Rebel, Sweetheart

THE REVIEW

This album by the Wallflowers is the latest in chronological order, but Jakob Dylan is about to embark on a solo project expected this summer. "Rebel, Sweetheart," from 2005, is certainly the latest in terms of quality: there's no experimentation in any direction (not that Jakob has shown to be musically daring!), no winning elements or successful sound-melodic solutions are found. There are overly bland choruses, so-so ballads, pointless gallops ("Back To California" above all), tracks useless to the Wallflowers' cause as well as to our ears.

The impression is like being stuck inside a venue where root aperitifs are being served, and that of Dylan the younger and his companions is a background, helpful in introducing us to the atmosphere, but at the same time must flow away quickly, and without leaving a trace.

And indeed it flows away so easily that after the fourth song you find yourself dusting your room, something you hate to do also because it's full of the most disparate and unsuitable trinkets. You even bought masks to happily coexist with dust, but this album made you want to clean everything, every knick-knack, every book, every pen. That's the effect of "Rebel, Sweetheart": making you want to do something else, whatever it may be.

Among tracks heard a million times before without ever spinning the Wallflowers' CD, only three stand out: the opening "Days Of Wonder," credible pop-rock, college rock, American rock from the charts, catchy enough, as expected presented by Jakob with the usual traditional root arrangement; "The Beautiful Side Of Somewhere," which has something, and perhaps more in common with a very famous Alan Parsons song, starting from the timely clapping of castanets; the concluding "All Things New Again," along the same lines as the previous ones. Listening to them together, they seem like three root Christmas songs, which denotes Jakob's proverbial fondness for supermelody, on the edge of pop and beyond.

The problem doesn't lie there, anyway: it's when Jakob returns to the path of root that you find him faltering, boring, making you distracted, making you even want to dust your room, and that's where he needs to get a grip on the situation, or at least try to ask more of himself. Starting from the next album.

Unless becoming (finally?) a solo artist has opened new artistic perspectives for Jakob, making him want to dare more compared to the usual pop-rock-root. If that will be the case, for the dust in my room there will be one less danger.