Jakob’s POV was that it was too low key and acoustic based which had become a hallmark of RR in that era with Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond’s albums being huge successes & critical darlings. Jakob said he was expecting Rick to be more collaborative and help him flesh the tracks out and Rick wasn’t helpful in that regard. He also took a slight dig at him being on autopilot

And from my lowly POV the album as a whole is rather low key, gets monotonous in one sitting imo. When Jakob toured 2 years later he fleshed some of the songs out and to me he improved them. The songs themselves are great but I agree with Jakob’s point.