Dylan the younger has come of age, inheriting the long black coat and moral heft of the old man, but without buckling under the influence.
He’s also working for the family business: his first solo album might be co-distributed by Starbucks Entertainment, but it also bears that familiar fire-engine red Columbia logo. If that isn’t enough pedigree, Rick Rubin produced the sessions at his house in the Hollywood Hills.
As you might have guessed, Seeing Things is a bare bones acoustic record, and while the sparsity flatters Dylan’s gorgeous baritone, which evokes a bluesier, more robust Nick Drake, the material is pitched somewhere between Bruce and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billie.
Maturity becomes him, especially on the opening ‘Evil Is Alive And Well’, a tightly coiled little gospel riddle, and ‘I Told You I Couldn’t Stop’, which is akin to one of Marvin Gaye’s love-and-war soul similes set to a Delta figure.
But it’s not all apocalyptic. ‘Something Good This Way Comes’ turns the weird sister’s augury on its head and reshapes itself as a bucolic breath of hope in an election year. ‘Valley Of The Low Sun’, ‘Everybody Pays As They Go’, ‘Will It Grow’, ‘On Up The Mountain’ – these are all well-made songs; sawed, planed and varnished with care and love. One wonders if Jakob hasn’t been sitting on Josh Ritter’s back porch trading licks over a spittoon.
All told, Seeing Things is a rustic artifact full of stern homilies and home comforts. One for those early autumn evenings.