Jakob Dylan, Wilton's Music Hall, London

Jakob Dylan thinks the lighting man's got it wrong. "The bassist has got more light on him than me," he wryly complains at the start. The younger Dylan, aware of the attention his dad endures, has a reputation for keeping his head down, but it seems the limelight is OK tonight.

Bob's latest album of off-cuts and ephemera, Tell Tale Signs, is getting warm reviews, and now his 38-year-old son, who looks much younger than that, is choosing to take a route perilously close to dad's domain. Jakob had achieved moderate, if decreasing, success with The Wallflowers, lesser lights of the post-grunge wave, but for his debut solo release Seeing Things, he's plumped for a mix of acoustic, calloused blues and fingerpicked folk. He has even chosen as producer Rick Rubin, who shaped the latter careers of Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash.

Dylan's gravelled voice owes more to Springsteen, though with unobtrusive backing from the three-strong Gold Mountain Rebels, you hear more of dad's nasal whine. It suits his move to ballads of soil, factories and war. "Will It Grow" is an affecting portrait of a small-time farmer; "Something Good This Way Comes" insists that travelling fairs bring light to bleak towns with the Dylanesque couplet, "Trouble, doll, is not moving mountains/ But digging the ground that you're on".

Such gems are few and far between, though, as Dylan relies on sepia-tinted clichés and bland sentiments. Worse still, he fails to provide emotional range; any irony within "War Is Kind" is instantly lost. He's helped somewhat by a band that provides an understated, rootsy backing, and who are missed when Dylan's solo interlude shows up his lack of intensity.