"Who will work the assembly line? Who will pull the freight on time? Who will work the all night haul? Who will explain it all. The song is a meditation on the collapse of American might, told firmly from the perspective of an artist raised in the Rust Belt. The nearly excellent "When The Wheels Don't Move" should translate nicely to the stage. The good news is that several of these tracks seem poised to emerge as solid live songs. While American Central Dust never breaks down, it certainly stalls at points where Farrar's ballads seem to cave in on their subjects, slumbering toward to a conclusion that has listeners checking the track time. No jury will have a final say, everyone knows the jury is guilty," Farrar sings, intimating his exhaustion.īut instead of letting his subject matter dictate, the song finds its own voice with a half-skipping pace that almost acts as a counterbalance to the grim lyrics. Memories and landscapes in triage and disappearing averages, permanent changes. The backbeat chugs along nicely while Farrar mutters a quiet indictment of our greed fueled society and the wreckage that it has wrought. The early track "Down To The Wire" opens with a nice shuffling drum-beat and fuzzed out slide guitar lines interweaving with a Booker T-inspired organ line. That's not to say there aren't some bright spots, especially for long-time fans. American Central Dust is a collection of songs that's too far removed from the urgency of 1994's essential Trace, and yet too near other less-inspired efforts from Farrar. The band's most recent release is no different, and in some ways it's a little too much of the same. While Tweedy has embraced engineering gimmicks, like recording an album over Cold War-era short wave communiqués, Farrar has relied on his voice and a stripped down approach to his art - there's nothing post-modern about anything in the Son Volt catalog. But there's a certain solace in Farrar's familiar formula that relies on his quintessentially country baritone. The result is a career that sometimes seems to have plateaued around 1994. Unlike former collaborator Jeff Tweedy - who made his musical mark by deliberately confounding convention with his post Uncle Tupelo band, Wilco - Farrar has stubbornly refused to change. Still there's a familiarity to the music that drifts between fuzz-toned Americana and straight-up lap steel tinged Appalachian country. Farrar's muscular twang is the only constant among Son Volt's shifting membership, which Farrar sometimes seems to flip through like stations on an FM dial. One of two bands born out of the seminal alt-country group Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt is more a brand than a band. The band rolls into Bend with a new album under its belt and Farrar, a recently critically lauded collaboration with Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard. Son Volt makes a stop at The Domino Room next week, bringing one of the pioneering voices in modern alt-country to Central Oregon in the form of front man Jay Farrar. “Questioning what’s going on.After what seems like a long and relatively unremarkable year for touring acts in Bend - or more precisely touring acts not in Bend, as the case often was - 2009 draws to a close with something of a highlight. “A lot of these songs are songs of turmoil,” Farrar said in a release.
Inspired by his admiration of folk singer Woody Guthrie and labor activist Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, Farrar and the band recorded portions of the 13-track album at the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Mother Jones Museum in Mount Olive, Illinois, accordingly. Similarly topical issues are covered throughout the politically driven Union. No way to get ahead ‘cause it’s already spent.” Lyrically, singer Jay Farrar is in protest mode, giving a voice to those struggling to make ends meet with chant-worthy lines like, “Already spent, already spent. Alt-country pioneers Son Volt offer insightful commentary on income inequality in “The 99.” The newly unveiled single appears on the band’s upcoming album Union, which will be released on March 29th.Ĭalling back the amplified sound of Son Volt’s early efforts, including 1995’s landmark album Trace, the new track is a dusty Heartland rocker punctuated by a gritty closing guitar solo.
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