The Search
SON VOLT
Transmit Sound/Legacy
Son Volt leader Jay Farrar has never strayed too far from the alt-country template he created back in the early 1990s with Uncle Tupelo. Whereas former UT bandmate Jeff Tweedy formed Wilco and eventually got all spacey, Farrar, whether with Son Volt or as a solo act, continued to showcase his sensitive, insightful lyrics alongside roots music. Son Volt's new album The Search is another organic outing, but the disc is spiced with instrumentation not found on previous Farrar compositions. More importantly, there's a sense of purpose not heard since Son Volt's acclaimed 1995 debut LP Trace.
The Search opens on a bleak note with a stately funeral march. "Feels like driving around in a slow hearse," Farrar sings, over and over. Melancholy strings swirl around his voice, and then an Eastern-sounding guitar is introduced about midway into the two-and-a-half-minute dirge, alerting listeners that this isn't a by-the-numbers alt-country affair. The message is driven home on track two, "The Picture," which features boisterous brass. The horns punctuate the song's chorus, creating an engaging slice of ska-country. On it, Farrar's intimate rumble of a voice sounds both weary and optimistic. He opens the song with bloody headlines about "hurricanes in December" and "earthquakes in the heartland." But the sound of the song, those jubilant horns, speak to the silver-lining message of the refrain: "We know when we get there we'll find mercy." It's a beacon of light against a backdrop that's an honest portrait of these messy, modern times.
Sonically, The Search is a seamless tapestry of weeping pedal steel, steamy slide guitar, soulful keyboard and festive horns. The album is adventurous but grounded — it sounds warm, crackles like a fire, hums like a fine-tuned engine. Farrar's lyrics form compelling vignettes, snapshots of working-class life in post-millennium America. "I took the night shift/ Another nickel on the dime/ Try to play it straight, make it different this time/ Still waiting to meet the next ex-wife," Farrar sings. "It's either watching these gauges for Monsanto/ Or a bar-back job for the casino/ The army won't want me after what this body's been through." The song is "Methamphetamine," a detailed character study sold with heart-melting steel guitar riffs and details that tell. It's a tune about a struggling, strung-out musician who wants to be "taken back" to a simpler time and place.
The Search is a poet's look at life in this era of corrupt democracy, false theology and unnecessary warfare — a major work by a veteran singer/songwriter and his band that taps into the new blues that plague society. 4 stars —Wade Tatangelo
Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Stax/Concord Music Group
The 1960s gave us groundbreaking British rock bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but during the same period a style of music emerged from below the Mason-Dixon line that holds a special place in many a fan's heart — Southern Soul. The accepted wisdom is that while Motown operated out of Detroit and issued infectiously smooth, urbane R&B, Memphis-based Stax issued grittier, more gospel-sounding records. Though that's a bit of an oversimplification, the newly minted double-disc Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration showcases the best of the Memphis stuff, making it a mandatory acquisition for Southern Soul novices. In addition to gorgeously remastered golden oldies like Otis Redding's "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay" and Sam and Dave's "Soul Man," there are more obscure beauties such as William Bell's "You Don't Miss Your Water" and Lynda Lyndell's "What a Man," which was successfully covered by Salt-N-Pepa in 1994. While this double-disc is an ace primer, enthusiasts with fatter wallets should head straight to the four-disc Stax Story box set. 5 stars —WT
Peanut Butter Wolf Presents: Stones Throw Ten Years
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Stones Throw
Stones Throw has plenty of reasons to justify this bloated 25-track compilation of beats and rhymes celebrating its first decade in the game. The label — founded by the crate-digger Peanut Butter Wolf — sets the standard for independent hip-hop excellence, with a roster built around the flat-out genius Madlib. The 'Lib appears here under his own name, as part of Jaylib (with the late J Dilla), as the producer behind Madvillain, as a member of Lootpack, as the one-man-jazz-band Yesterdays New Quintet, and as his helium-voiced alter-ego Quasimoto. This set was chosen wisely, giving plenty of room to the better-known artists and seductive single tracks to those whose LPs aren't quite up to snuff just yet, like Dudley Perkins and M.E.D. If you've missed out on what's been happening on the West Coast underground over the last 10 years, here's your CliffsNotes. 4 stars —Cooper Levey-Baker
This article appears in Mar 14-20, 2007.