The Wallflowers

★★★★ Exit Wounds

Jakob Dylan and co’s first LP in almost a decade.

Its title a metaphor for the previous relationship baggage we port around, Exit Wounds is a rootsy, intricately arranged, classy-sounding album with ‘come hither’ song titles (Wrong End Of The Spear; The Dive Bar In My Heart). The lineage is perhaps more Traveling Wilburys than Dad this time out, the George Harrisonesque motifs on Roots And Wings and easy, Tom Petty-ish swing of I Hear The Ocean (When I Wanna Hear Trains) a delight. With the Jackson, Alabama-raised Shelby Lynne a smouldering Southern soul presence across four songs and Jakob Dylan, now 51, phrasing these literate backward glances with new gravitas, Exit Wounds is a welcome return for the man last seen duetting with Beck, Cat Power et al on 2018’s Laurel Canyon doc, Echo In The Canyon.

It’s his best original work by some yards.