Son Volt – American Central Dust
It always takes me absolutely ages to get into Son Volt albums, so I suppose I’m due a bit of an apology for the poor publicity team at Toolshed who sent me this a couple of months ago and have been patiently waiting for a response ever since.
I wanted to take my time though, because that’s just my pace with Jay Farrar’s band. The music itself is a little like that as well: rich, comforting and unhurried. They sound like a band who are prepared to give you the time to come to them on your own terms, whenever you’re ready, which is a reassuring feeling when listening to a record.
Inevitably though, my first reactions to this were the usual: ‘Well, where are the tunes? Where’s the immediacy? It all sounds the damn same!’ I must have listened to this record through almost twenty times or so before I started to know the songs well enough to form relationships with them individually, instead of as a single homogenous lump.
In this case it was the gorgeously harrowing tale of the wreck of the Sultana which was the trigger. For some reason this was the song which grabbed me first, and given the rather horrible subject matter and my predilection for sad music, it was quite an iron grip. It was only then that I started to hear that same heartbreak in many of the other songs. Cocaine and Ashes is similarly laced with luxuriant pathos – the kind that breaks your heart yet makes you feel warm and consoled inside at the same time. It’s a canny trick, and few can pull it off anything like this well.
Apart from the sad songs, there is a shimmering rage to tracks like When the Wheels Don’t Move – not unhinged fury, more a growling glower of a song, which marks perhaps the furthest distance from classic alt-country to which this album ever wanders.
Farrar sings about his country, its history, its legacy and its people – it’s a remarkable blend of the big and the little stories in that respect. Perhaps that’s where the title comes from, with the dust equally representing the grit of the music and the ashes of America’s confident self-regard. As a title, it also conjures up the dustbowl nightmare of the Grapes of Wrath, for me, and fitting that he should do so so soon after Wilco, led by Farrar’s former bandmate Jeff Tweedy, released a version of Woody Guthrie’s Jolly Banker which takes aim at precisely that subject.
So I doubt Son Volt are going to shock anyone any time soon in a musical sense. They seem entirely settled in their general dynamic, and I can live with that quite happily. It means I know to take my time, not to rush anything, and give enough time I know their albums will seep into my consciousness eventually. Just be prepared to relax and let it come to you at its own pace.
Son Volt – Dynamite
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I wrote this off as bland/boring pretty quickly. Maybe I’ll give it another listen.
don’t want to be pernickity, but when exactly was jay farrar in wilco? i think you’re getting your jays mixed up again sir! jay farrar and jeff tweedy were both in uncle tupelo before jf formed son volt and jt wilco. jay bennet was in wilco. he’s the dead one.
Tim – yes, so did I, and it took a lot of listens to get into. I did get into it though.
Euan – duly altered. Fucking hell. That’s what comes from trying to write posts during your lunch break and not reading them back to yourself properly. Thanks.
These are pleasant enough, aren’t they?
There are moments when you wish they’d put a little more oomph into the arrangements – not go wild – but perhaps give the songs a little more room to breathe.
But maybe that’s missing the point, and that in another twentty listens – as you suggested Matthew – it will all drop into place.
Loving the retro look to that album cover too.
I have listened to Son Volt only sporadically since Trace, which I loved, although I recently bought the 2002 soundtrack of the film The Slaughter Rule, which Farrar recorded. I can say that I instantly like “Cocaine and Ashes” because fiddle like that will always suck me in. Thanks, Matt, I will be sure to give this album a try.
NineBall – More room to breathe generally means less oomph in the arrangements, doesn’t it? The problem with slow burners like this, of course, is that people more often than not won’t bother to take the time at all, which is a shame, but I guess it does build you a solid base of genuine fans, which is presumably all most musicians want in the first place.
Linda – Cocaine and Ashes and Sultana are probably my favourites, but then I always did prefer the sad songs.
I suppose it depends on your definiton of “oomph”.
You could define it as volume and compression during the recording, so that the finished mix has a degree of “oomph” while losing clarity and definition.
Or you could relate it to a more personal notion of “oomph” from the musicians at the arrangement stage; being brave and imaginitive, and having that certain get-up-and-go, so you have engaging and inventive plans for the songs before you set the tapes rolling.
I was going for the latter, but I could have been more clear.
Oomph as in flair & imagination, rather than forcefulness? I guess, although that’s not really how I’d interpret the word.
In any case, more imaginative arrangements certainly might make it more immediate, but might take away from that slow burn intimacy which is so nice once you really get into the album.
Yep – you’ve got it.
I think what I was picking up from listening to this was that the arrangements were straightforward enough to be considered predictable. There’s little immediately apparent to distinguish these players from any other jobbing session musician you might decide to rope in for the recording session.
There are one or two moments where someone does threaten to let loose, and you can almost imagine the band leader fixing them with a stare at that moment and wagging a finger, and the performance slips back into the mundane again.
These are a couple of great songs with well-wrought lyrics, which I feel are let down by listless (“oomph”-less?) arrangements and performances. This could be the reason it’s taken you so long to appreciate the inherent quality hidden in the songs, because there’s a dull patina of unstimulating familiarity to scrape away first.
I’m not suggesting they should “wig-out” and add any overdriven stylophone or wah-wah kazoo just for shits and giggles; going a bit easier on the the sustain pedal on the piano might have been a start.
I actually like the restraint in the arrangements quite a lot. Where I do agree with you is that I would prefer a bit more variety from song to song.