Kicking It Up: Son Volt, 'American Central Dust'

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IT'S BEEN 15 years since Uncle Tupelo broke up, and the disparity between the career trajectories of Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar is painfully obvious: Wilco is nearly a household name, while Son Volt feels more like a footnote to the Tupelo legacy.

Those of us who favor Son Volt over Wilco are in the vast minority. One might assume that my preference is because I always root for the underdog, but the truth is, I've always been more partial to Farrar's voice than to Tweedy's, even back in the Tupelo days: Farrar's gravelly sigh captured a certain weariness (as on the group's famous Carter Family cover, "No Depression"), while Tweedy was just a little too polished for my taste.

On Son Volt's latest, "American Central Dust", Farrar sounds even more drained than usual. He alludes to Keith Richards' infamous snorting of his father's remains on "Cocaine and Ashes," but the song is really more about Farrar's voice than about the Rolling Stones guitarist. With a heavy moan, his confession, "I've been told I had six months to live / but I've outlasted them all," sounds neither relieved nor enthused. Instead, he just sounds fed up, like he's about ready for someone to pull the damn plug already.

That's the tone for most of "Dust": Farrar sounds either dejected or hung over (or both). While his band rumbles with a bubbling energy on "When the Wheels Don't Move," Farrar sounds pissed off. But his tone also matches the song's topic: "Wheels" addresses the decline of industrial America, revealing a songwriter who is remarkably literate behind his gruff, disinterested facade.

This isn't the wry erudition of Colin Meloy's Decemberists, either: Farrar makes the listener work for it. "Sultana" tells the story of the explosion of the SS Sultana in 1865, the most fatal maritime disaster in this country's history. It's a little bit of a history lesson, sure, but ultimately, Farrar paints a more vivid picture of the explosion than the ship's Wikipedia page ever could: he captures the gravity of the situation with a deliberate pace, and his bandmates echo his tone with measured piano chords and flourishes of pedal-steel guitar.

It's a sound that works particularly well for Farrar: none of the random horns that dropped in unexpectedly on 2007's "The Search"; this is straight-up Americana. The opening track, "Dynamite" sounds like the Farrar of yesteryear: a lulling twang, soothing harmonies, and a lyrical twist ("This love is like celebrating / the Fourth of July with dynamite") that's either a backhanded compliment or a warning. Either way, Farrar is in rare form here, and his dry tone is just a developed version of what made his voice so compelling back in the days of Uncle Tupelo.

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Written by Express contributor Catherine Lewis
Photos courtesy J.Wagner & S.Waugh