The Wallflowers

Can anyone write a piece on The Wallflowers without mentioning the frontman's father? I guess I just did, too. I'd like to point out that Jakob Dylan never told anyone he was going to change the face of music like his father. He doesn't have great vocal range and his lyrics aren't jaw-droppingly original, but you always get the sense that he believes what he's singing about. There's an every guy sincerity and passion to him that you wouldn't expect from the son of a legend.

He actually sounds more like he was raised and groomed in Jersey by Springsteen. The themes, pop hooks and delivery all borrow heavily from The Boss. The album is chock full of potential hit singles (if there was a station that'd deem them cool enough). Unfortunately the tepid single, "The Beautiful Side of Somewhere," won't help them get much attention on the radio this time around. They sound more like Jersey-via-Jovi (circa Slippery When Wet era) on that particular track. But it is sandwiched between two of the album's standout tracks -- "The Passenger" and "Here He Comes (Confessions of a Drunked Marionette)." They're both fine examples of Brendan O'Brien's simple yet textured production being a perfect fit for this straightforward pop-rock album.

The Wallflowers have never pretended to be something they're not. Whatever's hip in the music scene at any given time is seemingly irrelevant to them (and I mean that as a compliment). Unless blue-collar bar rock becomes the sound du jour in the next month or so, Rebel, Sweetheart will unfortunately go unnoticed. Which is a shame, because it's yet another solid album from The Wallflowers. - Doug Kamin

The Wallflowers, particularly their leader, Jakob Dylan, can't catch a break. They're not only bound to be compared -- not entirely fairly but certainly understandably -- to Jakob's father, Bob, but an equally large burden is that they're a straight-ahead rock band in a time that doesn't value straight-ahead rock bands. They were able to ride the post-alternative wave to the top of the charts in the mid-'90s, when all guitar bands were lumped into a nebulous alt-rock scene, but just a few years later, in the aftermath of trip-hop, MTV Amp, and OK Computer, all big rock bands were expected to tackle the serious challenge of electronica, since that was the wave of the future and all. Didn't matter if they were groups as singularly unequipped to fuse loops and guitars as R.E.M. or Oasis -- they all made tentative attempts to reconcile classicist rock with futurist electronica. Not the Wallflowers. They stuck to their guns and made driving, songwriter-oriented rock & roll in the vein of Springsteen, Tom Petty, and John Mellencamp. This stubbornness served their music well, but it won them no new fans, either among critics or the general public, who criticized them for being what they are: a working rock band, pure and simple. On each record, they have variations on their signature sound, given a slightly different spin depending on what producers they work with, but that's what most rock bands, good or bad, do -- they make records and go on tour. This happened more in the '70s and '80s than in the '90s and 2000s, when dwindling audiences and corporatization kept bands off the road and out of the studio for long stretches of time, but the Wallflowers remain a rock band in the traditional sense, mining a similar vein on Rebel, Sweetheart, their fifth album, as they did on their first. While there are no musical surprises here, this is a better album than its predecessor, Red Letter Days, not just because it's a stronger, more varied set of songs, but because they finally have a perfectly matched producer in Brendan O'Brien. Like his recent productions for Bruce Springsteen, O'Brien helps focus and revitalize the Wallflowers, opening up the music through subtly textured overdubs but also giving the band a harder attack than they've ever had. Simply put, they've never sounded better as a band than they do here, and they've never had a record as robust and interesting on a pure sonic level as they do here. Not that Rebel, Sweetheart offers anything all that different from previous Wallflowers albums -- they just do what they do better than they have before. Ultimately, there's a certain comfort in knowing that the Wallflowers can deliver sturdy, engaging classicist rock like this, since it makes them different from other rock bands of their time in yet another way: they're reliable. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide