In the late 1980s, the members of Uncle Tupelo were checking out the entire country and folk sections from their local library and passing them around like bootlegs, which exposed them to many of the artists and styles that would inform their sound. A few of the records they cite as inspirations-- including 1975's High Atmosphere: Ballads and Banjo Tunes from Virginia and North Carolina-- were compiled and released on Rounder Records, which at one time specialized more in old acts than new. It's not especially surprising that Son Volt, Jay Farrar's post-Tupelo band, have finally signed with the venerable label, placing them alongside acts as diverse as Nanci Griffith, Rhonda Vincent, and Farrar's hero Woody Guthrie.
That might sound like a circle finally completed if Farrar sounded today as galvanized as he did 20 years ago. Son Volt's label debut, American Central Dust, is some of the sleepiest protest music ever made: Every song saunters by at a slow tempo, Farrar's voice sounds increasingly inexpressive, and John Agnello's production makes everything sound real purdy but lifeless. Of course Farrar is never going to rock out again-- and the muddy electric guitars on the 25-mph "When the Wheels Don't Move" doesn't count-- but this folksier sound he has settled into during this decade rarely works up a sweat or even rouses you from a light doze.
His deep, commanding voice-- perhaps one of the most imitated sounds of the alt-country movement-- has mellowed considerably over the years, such that at times he sounds a little wooden and disengaged. Occasionally he'll hit a high note ("Roll On") or sustain a syllable into a strange vocal buzz ("Down to the Wire"), but he can't sell his sympathy for Keith Richards on "Cocaine and Ashes" or work up much bluster on "Pushed Too Far". Lyrically, these songs prove slightly more straightforward and coherent than much of his '00s output, but even this directness sounds like an effort. On "Sultana", about the steamboat that exploded near Memphis in 1865, he approaches the history lessons with dry matter-of-factness and clunky phrasing that's made all the more egregious by the absence of details or point. "The worst American disaster on water," he sings. "The Titanic of the cold Mississippi was the Sultana."
For the most part, however, Farrar's subject matter is much more contemporary. As always, he's concerned with social injustice, corporate manipulation, job loss, the little guy vs. the fat cats, but in recent years his lyrics have tended toward the poetical and cryptic, dulling the sharp edges of his outrage. Perhaps it all goes back to those Rounder comps: As he has aged, Farrar has grown increasingly reverent toward his source material, learning his entire moral code-- at least the one expressed in his music-- from the singers of coal-mining and union songs. They are undeniably great and knowledgeable teachers, yet his faith in them has become not simply unshakable, but unexamined and unquestioned. His outrage once took instrumental form-- in the roar of guitars and the boom of that voice-- but now the music feels safe and deferential. Dissent can sound quiet or twangy or even laidback, but it should never sound so compulsory.
