Fans waiting for a new Jakob Dylan offering will find their yearning satisfied today, with the drop of his new solo record, the T-Bone Burnett-produced Women and Country. Dylan’s popularity peaked with The Wallflowers’ 1996 Bringing Down the Horse, a surprisingly good record whose most popular track offering, “One Headlight” became something of an anthem for the winding-down angst of the 90s losing its grunge and its dance music. On separate occasions, Dylan has performed the song with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, and Pete Townshend.
Women and Country is on sale now, but has been streaming for days, building excitement that just may cement Dylan into the tight canon whose company he should find pleasant—he may have to push aside Jenny Lewis and M. Ward, but his place his secure. “Something Good This Way Comes” (above) is a standout. Watch for the moment when his voice cracks just so at the moment “got my window open wi-ide”. Neko Case and Kelly Hogan sing backup vocals on the track, like they do on every song on the album. It’s unusual to have someone as big of a star in her own right as Case singing backup vocals on a project that isn’t a concept album, especially since it isn’t in the role of a Lisa Hannigan-type ephemeral presence, but the tone is just right. This spring, he’s touring with Neko and Kelly both. Whether Case will be a more powerful presence on stage than she is on the record remains to be seen.
Attempting to write about Jakob Dylan without, in some way, writing about Bob Dylan would be futile and plagued by a kind of euphemistic circumlocution. His vocal range and songwriting lyrical sensibilities–and piercing blue eyes–give an enthusiastic genealogical tip of the hat to the poet Zimmerman. Jakob sounds like pre-Farm Aid Bob without the phantom going electric accusations. But nothing more should be said about the musical prodigy as a musical progeny because it doesn’t work well in the context of Jakob as his own artist. Shy and uneager to discuss his father, or his mother, or anything at all, Dylan is also 41, with the appreciation of “a good woman by my side” and a history of past pain to give gravitas to the American roots spirit in his songs. In a recent interview with the Huffington Post, Dylan explains that he’s interested in exploring, “The human nature of how people think, and the muck that we wind up in. That's the stuff that I think makes great songs. I wouldn't be the go-to guy for anybody's halftime, get-the-crowd-into-it.”
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