Gig review: Jakob Dylan

Published on Monday 26 July 2010 19:19

JAKOB DYLAN *** THE ARCHES, GLASGOW

BEING the son of America's greatest living songwriter has its inevitable downsides, not least in the expectations department, but it has some undoubted perks too.

Since going solo in 2008 after 20 years spent fronting commercial rock band The Wallflowers, Jakob Dylan's career hasn't exactly ignited, despite the best efforts of a pair of Grammy-winning producers (Rick Rubin and T-Bone Burnett respectively) on his two albums to date. Yet the large audience at this show – its average age disproportionately skewed towards the greyer end of the spectrum – suggested that, on the strength of the family name, there's plenty of people curious to hear him play live. Even if it requires significant reserves of patience.

Dark of features and dressed in a smart black jacket and light brown fedora, the 40-year-old looked like the shadow of his famous father when the lights fell a certain way. But stepping out from dad's shadow is the name of the game, and on this evidence he's got work to do.

The dusty, plugged-in Americana textures and tones Dylan and his six-piece band trade in are pleasantly subtle and woozy, but also staunchly unvarying. Coupled with an unequivocally sombre mood, and a default tempo which rarely accelerated beyond a gentle canter, this set couldn't help but drift into dreariness.

That his guitarist's solos began to receive their own ovations hinted at how hungry the crowd was for something to get excited about. It didn't help that Dylan's chat, however polite, was so parsimoniously spare. If he expects his music to speak for itself, he'll have to improve its vocabulary first.