For his first solo effort, Jakob Dylan, leader of TheWallflowers and son of Bob, joined forces with Rick Rubin to create an album full of stark songs. Covering 10 songs in 37 minutes, the singer/songwriter keeps things on the lean side. There's no room for showboating or fancy production tricks - just the man and his music coming at you as straight and clear as possible. By keeping things stripped down and "real,” Rick Rubin has revitalized and kept current the careers of legends like Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond. He has also done the younger Dylan a good turn by leading him down a similar musical path that has him getting as close as he's ever come to making music in the vein of his father. But make no mistake, Seeing Things is very much the work of an individual artist and never feels like a Bob Dylan tribute album.
During his time with The Wallflowers, Jakob Dylan always favored a sound that was reminiscent of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - laid back rock on the twang side with plenty of radio friendly drumbeats and guitar riffs. This time out the production consists of quiet strumming and other gentle accompaniment. Dylan himself handles guitar and bass duties on the record but he called in a crackerjack fleet of extra musicians to give him a lift including Z Berg from The Like and Rilo Kiley/The Elected drummer Jason Boesel. It may not be the most obvious meeting of musical minds but it works like a charm.
Seeing Things is as stark in its subject matter as its sound - all black and white and very few shades of grey. The opening track "Evil is Alive and Well" is a bleak but stirring meditation on wickedness personified. "It's ragged and fat and hungry as hell / evil is alive and well" sings Dylan. Paying the piper in dark robes comes up again in "Everybody Pays as They Go," one of the album's strongest songs. "You can't go back and see it the way you saw it then, nobody can" is the lesson offered up among a palette of folk rock beats. The flip side of the dark side of things is also cleverly offered up in a sweet rolling song called "Something Good This Way Comes" that name checks twittering birds, summer sun and apple pie.
Besides the existential battle of good vs. evil, Jakob Dylan spends plenty of time musing about more concrete issues as well. "All Day and All Night" is a working man's song and "Will it Grow" is about "my fore fathers, they worked the land" but there's nothing quite like the American tale, "War is Kind," that passes from mother to brother ("brother war is best in the morning when you've had rest") to daughter and lovers. When Dylan sings, "my age is a metaphor that only speaks of everything before," he perfectly ties in every generation's role as inheritor in the grand scheme of things.
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