Any time your father is one of the greatest American songwriters of all-time, expectations are gonna be a little high. It’s an almost impossible scenario to carve your own niche under the looming backdrop of all-time albums like Highway 61 Revisited and Blood on the Tracks, and yet Wallflowers lead singer Jakob Dylan (who if you haven’t figured out by this point is the son of the iconic Bob Dylan) managed to do it with his band’s second album Bringing Down The Horse. It’s an album that echoes many of his father’s songwriting sensibilities, with feelings of nostalgia and loss echoing throughout hyper-specific stories of randomly assorted characters, showcasing that the songwriting chops don’t fall far from the family tree. And the sound is distinctly Americana in a very modern sort of way, filled with beautifully toned electric guitars that crunch and grind against the traditional backdrops of acoustic guitars, banjos, and organs.
Bringing Down The Horse is one of those albums that will forever remind me of the sounds of childhood, a 90’s time capsule that evokes feelings of that time while still sounding modern and contemporary whenever you put it in. The drums in particular have such a wonderful snap to them, loose and wide like a live recording with just another compression to blend them into the mix, and Jakob Dylan’s rustic and tender vocals have just enough grit in the lower register he commonly occupies to bring out a sound that’s intimate and yet big enough to handle the band’s ability to go big when they need to. It’s a helluva record with singles that stand on their own and yet fit comfortably into the context of the record.
Standout Songs: “One Headlight”, “Laughing Out Loud”, “Three Marlenas”, “The Difference”
Matthew. 