Breach
The Wallflowers' third album isn't so much a breach birth as it is past-due. But Jakob Dylan claimed he needed the four years off to come to terms with whether or not he could plumb his own life for material. It appears he can, because here the songwriter tears the veil off his complicated relationship with his famous father and uses it as a vehicle to express some of the same moments of self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy that we all experience, even if we aren't related toBob Dylan. This newfound  candor in the formerly abstruse singer makes for a much more authentic, emotionally affective record, whether he's wearing his neuroses on his sleeve or reinventing old slave spirituals in "Mourning Train." And even if you don't believe that the Dylan paterfamilias ever castigated his son like "Hand Me Down" infers ("Now look at you / With your worn out shoes / Living proof evolution is through"), it makes for compelling listening, made even more persuasive by the Wallflowers' sparse, muscular playing, which evokes the specter of those titans of classic rock:Jackson Browne, theEagles, andTom Petty & the Heartbreakers.--Jaan Uhelszki