The Dylans Take Us On a Trip to the 60s

Before a single note has been played, The Dylans' self-titled debut album displays its allegiance to sixties rock and roll with all the subtlety of a jackhammer.

To start, there's the obvious reference to Bob Dylan. Then the album cover, complete with a lunar landscape and bright, happily floating fruit. Throw in the lemony "Yellow Submarine," and you can begin to imagine the entire picture.

The song lists join in the fun. Titles such as "Planet Love," "Love To," and "No Coming Down" pop off the page as though discarded tracks from a Doors album had slipped off the oldies shelf and landed in the New Releases bin.

It's no surprise that the Dylans' music strongly parallels their album jacket's blatant emulation of sunny psychedelia. A distorted organ introduces the opening track "She Drops Bombs" and is soon followed by heavily-produced Beatlesque harmonies.

The psychedelic ambience, trippy lines and descriptions of the singer's interactions with a mystical girl who "plays electric guitar" and "drops her bombs on your heart" calls to mind the Beatles "She Said She Said."

But the band can't really pull it off. This overproduced sixties throwback is too full of blatantly derivative lyrics and disappointingly dull hooks to come off as anything but a poor imitation.

Unfortunately, "She Drops Bombs" is indicative of the album as a whole. The twelve tracks end up blending together as one murky montage of tambourines, Hammond organs, watery electric guitars, and indistinct vocal harmonies which spew out shallow lines of neo-psychedelia such as "I hear your tambourines/inside my Etch-a-Sketch."

The underlying issue is that the songwriting simply isn't very good. Though the music is well-played and the production expertly imitative, the album comes off as the music of a band masking its material with ripped-off sixties cliches, instead of a nostalgic homage to the Beatles and the other classic rockers from whom they so openly draw inspiration.

The album's over-production is a damper, as well as a mask--the Dylans frequently lose ability to put out an upbeat, energetic sound behind its gimmicky sixties-style haze. Songs such as "Planet Love," "Sad Rush on Sunday," and "Love To" deliver memorable melodies, but can't deliver their true potential because of the distorted production.

The Dylans do deviate--once--from their formula of upbeat electric rockers. Sadly, the result is the monotonous "(Don't Cut Me Down) Mary Quant in Blue," which features an early eighties dance pop groove, a sound last heard on the $100 Yamaha Porta-Sound PSS-470 mini-keyboard that Uncle Harry gave me for Hanukah. So much for fancy production.

Admittedly, the Dylans are still a young band. They play well together and display flashes of humor and melody. Perhaps they could improve upon their first offering by combining improved songwriting with a more innovative sound.

Until then, though, their debut album's slick production and poor songwriting will remain lavish makeup upon an ugly face. No matter how much you slop on, it's never gonna look pretty.