by Morgan Clendaniel.

Since the breakout success of their sophomore album, Bringing Down the Horse, The Wallflowers have basically dropped off the radar of popular music. After two middling albums, Jakob Dylan's band is trying again with Rebel, Sweetheart. Rebel is supposed to be an imperative verb, and it's an odd title, since the music on the album is anything but a rebellion.

While the Wallflowers seem to have shed most of the electronic pretensions that had slowly infected their post-Horse work, as well as hiring new wunderkind producer Brendan O'Brien (getting the Boss’s seal of approval is probably a big resume boost, huh?), they don't deviate much from the workaday rock and roll that worked so well on Bringing Down the Horse, but they don't quite reach those levels either.

What results is an album of songs that sound like they were performed by an above average bar band with a overzealous producer and a great singer who delves a little too far into post-Dylan (i.e. Bob) surrealist lyrics. It's not bad, but not particularly spectacular, and certainly not the kind of music that makes you want to rebel from anything.

On Rebel, Sweetheart, there is an overwhelming sense of overproduction; too many tracks muddying up each song. And Dylan's lyrics, while sometimes remarkably good, can quickly become obtuse to a point that even his father couldn't get away with. Two excellent songs stand out. The opening track, "Days of Wonder" has the only real hook on the entire album. Combined with the catchy "Back To California," these two songs add a sense of urgency and power to an album that is otherwise too laid back to really grab anyone's interest.

Like the Beatles said: get back to where you once belonged. Rebel, Sweetheart finds the Wallflowers trying to work their way back to the good old rock and roll of their earliest days, when they sounded like an exciting combination of the rock and roll of the Heartbreakers and the Americana inflections of the Band. But they still have a long way to go before they get there. All we have here is an album that is altogether too content to be shiny and beautiful at the expense of any true grit. In these days of super polished chart toppers and overly-artistic indie music, people seem to forget that grit is what rock and roll is really about; it's about sweat, sex, and rebellion. And Rebel, Sweetheart doesn't have enough of any of it.