Here's the text from the Fall 2000 issue of Revolver magazine. Revolver reviews "Breach" (giving it 4 stars out of 5). There's also a Q&A with Jakob at the end!!
JAKOB'S LADDER: After the Wallflowers' underrated self-titled 1993 debut album came and went without leaving trace on the pop music landscape, Jakob Dylan, the group's leader, more or less disappeared. He overhauled his band and would not put out another album for four years. Then, after 1996's excellent "Bringing Down the Horse" made him a superstar, he more or less disappeared again. Maintaining the pattern, four years passed before his next recorded effort would see a release.
It's been said that two essential measures of a person's worth are how one deals with failure and how one deals with success. Dylan has now had the opportunity to test himself against both those realities, and he's impressively risen to the occasion each time. "She says there's no success like failure/And failure's no success at all," Jakob's father once sang in "Love Minus Zero (No Limit)"; his son has learned this lesson well.
The family reference is relevant to "Breach." Discovering who you are within the hall of mirrors of people's expectations–their preconceptions, envy, condescension, and even their affection for the person they believe or desire you to be–is the running theme of "Breach" ("Now when I think of me/I think of someone else instead," goes one telling line.) And those shifting perceptions do not even begin to take into account the fears the young Mr. Dylan must have nurtured about himself.
The album's title refers, on the one hand, to the evident breakdown of a relationship, a breach of a promise of love. "It may take two to tango/But, boy, just one to let go," Dylan sings on "Letters from the Wasteland,"the album's opening track, while "Some Flowers Bloom Dead" begins, "We didn't make it/We didn't pull through/You shouldn't blame me/I don't blame you." But the title also evokes the battle of resiliency of the Shakespearean exhortation "once more unto the breach," the determination to plunge into life full bore, regardless of the pain that has come before and that surely awaits.
Dylan fluctuates between those two emotions–bereavement and the conviction to endure–throughout the album. Co-produced by Andrew Slater and Michael Penn, "Breach" is suffused with an autumnal feel, the sense that experience and self-knowledge have come at painful cost. In terms of its sound, it is far less exuberant than "Bringing Down the Horse," far more stripped-down and varied in its arrangements. Still, Slater and Penn don't so much overhaul Dylan's instantly recognizable folk-rock–guitars, keyboards, bass, drums–as freshen it up. One song, "Mourning Train," recalls old work songs and spirituals; its arrangement consists solely of acoustic guitar, organ and handclaps, along, of course, with Dylan's characteristic husky, breathy, startlingly intimate vocal. "Sleepwalker,"the album's first single, nods to Sam Cooke's "Cupid" in its catchy chorus. "Babybird," an affecting "hidden"track, sets Dylan's lilting, children's-poem lyrics ("Sleep through the morning light/With your arms around your brother") to a tinkling, music-box melody.
On "Hand Me Down,"Dylan dramatizes in a way he never has before the struggle of being the Great Man's Son, claiming he's "living proof that evolution is through." "You're a hand me down," the chorus runs, "You feel good and you look like you should/But you won't ever make us proud." Those feelings of inadequacy no doubt fuel all the identity questions on "Breach" and make it that much more satisfying when, by the album's end, Dylan emerges out of his father's shadow to stand fully on his own.
Not that "Breach" tidily wraps up all its loose ends. The issues that Dylan explores on the album are the kind that never get fully resolved. They flare up disturbingly at times, receding quietly into the subconscious at others. The only recourse is simply to accept that they are part of life, and then move on. Now 30, Dylan has moved on down the line a respectable distance. And if the honesty, sincerity, and sheer musical appeal of "Breach" are any indication, we can look forward with pleasure to his chronicles of the rest of his journey. And this time, it might be sooner than four years.
A Q&A WITH JAKOB DYLAN ON THE WALLFLOWERS' NEW ALBUM
REVOLVER: You've written in first person before, but there are some songs on this album that listeners are going to take to be confessional. Did you have any trepidation about writing songs like that?
JAKOB: It was a privilege that I don't think I really allowed myself before, because it seemed too revealing of information that I didn't feel comfortable discussing with other people. Not that I'm entirely comfortable with it now . . . But if I wanted to continue progressing as a songwriter, I had to really say what was on my mind. I can't be that concerned anymore with how much people read into my songs. A lot of those ideas–feeling alienated, not feeling good enough–are universal, bu they become a little more interesting because people are curious about my past.
REVOLVER: Certainly, the feeling of not being good enough that turn up in "Hand Me Down" are easy for anyone to relate to. But it does seem unexpected to hear them being voiced by someone so successful.
JAKOB: Well, people get rewarded in lots of different ways, and selling a lot of records and playing in front of a lot of people didn't necessarily have the effect on me that maybe it has on others. A lot of people do that, and all of a sudden they feel really confident and validated. But there were definitely times when it didn't work for me. It's just a personality trait, really. If I can sell this many albums, or perform with this person . . . Whatever. If you're lucky enough, you actually get there. Then you wake up and wonder why you don't feel as good as you thought you'd feel. It's not about fame. It's a self-confidence thing, wondering if what you're attempting to do is really coming through the way you thought it would.
