![]() Midway through, the song kicks into a different gear, as if the band turned onto a straightaway and buried the accelerator. “Power invested in people, let the ideas shine,” Farrar sings over a bed of acoustic guitar topped with overdriven electric guitar licks and a steady beat.Įlsewhere, there’s a sense of change in the air as people in the street push back against authority on “The Globe,” a sturdy roots-rocker with a Moog synth part in the middle that recalls The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” “Someday Is Now” finds “players of the long con” getting toppled for their perfidy, and Farrar intones the lyrics with a stern gravitas, accompanied by hard-strummed acoustic guitar and foreboding electric licks. He makes the idea explicit on “Living in the USA,” a centerpiece of the new album that catalogs the contradictions inherent in 21st-century America, from the dark money and fear-mongering that undermine the system to the resilience of those fighting for a better, more equitable nation. He’s a believer in grassroots, bottom-up solutions that involve people working together, a notion that recurs in Son Volt’s latter-day work. In his low-key way, Farrar has become a quietly radical idealist.Įven amid the lingering chaos and cruelty of the Trump years, a global pandemic, and protests and unrest in response to the ever more visible framework of structural racism in America, Farrar sees cause for a measure of optimism on Electro Melodier, Son Volt’s 10th album. In fact, these days, there’s often a hopeful current running beneath the surface. ![]() And while he’s written some downer tunes, particularly when he was wrestling with youthful cynicism early in his career, there aren’t as many of those as you might think from the sound of his preternaturally weathered, lived-in voice. Farrar is focused instead on writing songs that say what he wants them to say, and then letting them stand on their own. He doesn’t have a public persona, or much of a social media presence. In reality, the Son Volt singer is simply self-contained. And we will stay right there, in the thick of the blue of the note.Jay Farrar has long had a reputation as a morose guy with a fondness for inscrutable, impressionistic lyrics. Perhaps because we have no other place to return to, but to the doleful front porch bayou gospel of “The Storm” and the endearingly drawled “Cairo and Southern,” every vowel pronounced long and drawn, plain and raw as day, Farrar’s voice fragile. But even still, we return to be broken by the bluest ones. “Lost Souls” struts in electric-garage, and “Cherokee St.” pounds, the percussive stomp pulling in close to home as Farrar retires, “Today’s world is not my home.” The menacing spoken-word creeper “Threads and Steel” closes ominously, the bass lines flapping like toggled flesh long-aware of the need for healing, but with no salve in sight. It just takes a second to adjust to the opposing forces. ![]() But anguish is only half the tone, and its match is found -there is snarl and there is bite in Notes of Blue. It is there, but only for a portion, on an album that might be much bluer, and might have wiped us out completely. The foil of the pedal steel gleams and folds -a perfect refracting machine for Jay Farrar’s chiseled baritone -allowing the onslaught of his could-be confidence-on-paper to bend and break and draw us under. ![]() From the first moment of the achingly beautiful opener “Promise the World” we capitulate, our minds recalling some of the first moments we heard Anodyne from Son Volt precursor Uncle Tupelo. ![]()
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