Top Songs of 2012 – #15
Kicking off my countdown of the 15 songs I enjoyed most this year is a cut from Glad All Over, The Wallflowers first album in seven years.
Generally, I was disappointed in this album. It didn’t meet the high standards of the band’s previous work, nor of Jakob Dylan’s two solo albums. It’s a bit generic in a way the band has avoided on most of its work.
Riding a wave of nostalgia for 90s acts, The Wallflowers returned this month with their first album since 2005’s Rebel, Sweetheart.
The Wallflowers made a big splash with 1996’s Bringing Down the Horse. Hit singles ‘One Headlight’ and ‘6th Avenue Heartache’ were radio staples that sound as fresh today as they did 16 years ago. But their brand of earnest roots rock felt out of place as grunge gave way to hip-hop, dance and electronica.
I did a creative writing assignment for one of my high school English teachers that consisted of a collection of poems and short stories. I’m not a real fan of poetry, but I enjoyed taking a stab at it. I actually still have the project and it’s almost painful to read now… a reminder of how tragically earnest and superficially deep I was at that age.
I still remember a comment my teacher wrote on one of those poems. Next to a particular turn of phrase he scribbled this: “Great line! Could drive a whole poem… and doesn’t, yet.”
I think it’s the “yet” that made that comment stick in my brain. Such an odd formulation. Wouldn’t most people write “and yet it doesn’t.”?
I recently watched an episode of Elvis Costello’s Sundance show Spectacle featuring a wonderful mix of guests — the first half was split between She & Him and Jenny Lewis and the second half featured Jakob Dylan, with everybody joining together at the end for a final song.
Everybody impressed but I was particularly drawn in by the Dylan interview. Jakob has grown even more into his father’s looks and his mannerisms and his inflections are similar too. It’s very strange to watch him talk. But his music just keeps getting better and better.
I feel bad for Jakob Dylan, one of the most underrated songwriters in my collection. I mean, how do you expect to forge an independent career when your dad is friggin’ Bob Dylan?
He’s gone at it a few ways. Early on he didn’t say anything about his dad. People asked, of course, but he tried to let his music speak for itself. Later, he wrote some songs that mentioned his father and opened up a bit more in interviews, usually to say that Bob was a very devoted family man. The stories were interesting, but it didn’t do much to help his sales.
Lately he doesn’t get much press at all, so his last name isn’t really a problem… nobody seems to know or care much about him or his pedigree.
Meet Me In Montauk 