Although A Complete Unknown – the biographical film of Bob Dylan’s early years in New York – didn’t win any of the eight Oscars for which it was nominated, it has had a considerable ripple effect.
It prompted renewed interest in this pivotal period in popular culture. The insightful book on which the film was based – Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald – shifted off shelves and Dylan’s early albums started selling again, especially his 1964 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which included the enduring Blowing in the Wind, the depressingly timely Masters of War, A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall and Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right.
When Dylan retreated after a motorcycle accident in 1966, many emerging singer-songwriters were touted as “the new Dylan”.
Few today are billed as such – Bob being too many different Dylans over the decades? – however, Jesse Welles, from Arkansas (15 albums under different names since 2012), has some of the young Dylan’s socio-political radar, is usefully vague about his background and has a croaky folksy delivery.
Last year’s War Isn’t Murder about Gaza – an offspring of Dylan’s Masters of War – was a blunt razor: “There’s money at stake, even Kushner agrees it’s good real estate. War isn’t murder, ask Netanyahu. He’s got a song for that and a bomb for you.”
In 2024, Welles released two country-folk albums – Hells Welles and then Patchwork – with fearless songs about fentanyl, Walmart, Trump, healthcare ….
Welles’ caustic humour has rarely had Dylan’s leavening of tender apolitical ballads, and over the long haul, his acerbic topicality could be wearying.
His new album Middle features a small band and swerves perilously close to Dylan in places (Horses with a violinist invokes Dylan’s Desire album) but Welles reins in the rage, and although the visceral impact is lessened, the album sounds the better for it.
However, he’s rare in the current climate as he pours gasoline onto his acoustic-driven, hard-edged, working-class folk rock.
An angry, Dylanesque young man worth attention.
Jason Isbell, who quit Drive-By Truckers almost 20 years ago for a career fronting his band The 400 Unit, has just released Foxes in the Snow, the first album of just him and acoustic guitar.
Unlike the dogmatic Welles, there’s a mollifying lightness to Isbell’s Americana. Bury Me has a timeless Appalachian quality (“I ain’t no outlaw but I’ve been inside”) and there’s the refined emotional depth of Guy Clark, John Prine and Townes Van Zandt.
The warm sentiment of the title track and its bruised opposite, Eileen, ring with truthful love and hurt: “It ends like it always ends, someone crying on the phone. You tell each other you can still be friends but you both know you’re on your own” in Eileen. Real emotions, sometimes unwelcome ones from the recently divorced Isbell (the raw True Believer) are Isbell’s subjects in intimate, sometimes confessional, songs aiming straight for the heart.
Different though they may be, Welles and Isbell confirm what Dylan proved 60 years ago: a voice and guitar can be a powerful and moving combination.
Albums by Jesse Welles and Jason Isbell are available digitally. A Complete Unknown is in selected cinemas nationwide.
