With the Wallflowers' new album, Breach, one little vowel makes all the difference. "I was just more comfortable this time saying 'I,'" frontman Jakob Dylan explains. "I've been in all my songs in one way or another, but this time I wanted to purge a little more in the first person. . . . I don't wanna lie, and on this record I didn't want to make up stories."

Due in stores Oct. 10, Breach was produced by Michael Penn, and guest stars include Elvis Costello, Pixies mastermind Frank Black and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers. "You find yourself having enough nerve to say, 'We should just call Elvis Costello,'" Dylan says. "You wait for someone to say, 'You can't do that,' and you're surprised when no one stops you."

The album crackles with the same barroom energy as the Wallflowers' 1996 breakthrough, Bringing Down the Horse, and the band's dark snap levitates somber rockers like "Letters From the Wasteland," "Some Flowers Bloom Dead," "Mourning Train" and "Murder 101."

"I think it's a fairly positive record, oddly enough," Dylan says with a laugh. "In a way that's why it's titled Breach: It's somewhat of a breakthrough. I didn't try to be interesting on this one -- just more honest."

MATT DIEHL
(September 7, 2000)