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I can't quite pin down what's going on inside Jay Farrar's
head. When he decided to reform Son Volt a couple years
back, he gathered a few young dudes and put out a solid album
of alt. country-tinged rock and roll. Then last year he did Gob
Iron, a project with Anders Parker that was totally
opposite of anything else either was doing at the time, culling
old hill songs about death, of all things. That record was superb
- haunting and melancholy with a resonance that far outshone almost
anything either artist had done on his own. Now, on the new Son
Volt record, The Search, Jay seems to have gotten a lot
of things out of his system and is falling back into patterns
he explored on his solo records, the tremendous Sebastopol
and the weirdly amazing Terroir Blues.
"Slow Hearse" starts the album off with reverse tape-sounding
loops and strong piano carrying the simple vocal line, "Feels
like driving around in a slow hearse." Farrar throws in some
amazing horns on the poppy "The Picture", a song that
has his unmistakable stamp on it, but leans more toward Memphis
soul than I ever imagined he could. I know the press was shocked
that there would be horns on a Son Volt record, but honestly,
it works better than any other attempts I've heard in the past
decade. "Action" sounds like the most logical continuation
of Terroir Blues, with it's "oh oh ohhoh oh oh"
chorus and the amazing turnarounds involving some amazing lyrical
exchanges. This is Jay Farrar at his best… clever and musically
literate, but stretching his own boundaries. "Underground
Dream" moves back into the soul realm a bit with big drums
and achingly yearning electric piano lines, while "Circadian
Rhythm" has an almost jam-band feel, with swirling, dreamy
guitars and crisp drumming. "The Search" goes back to
classic Son Volt beautiful dirty guitar tones and rhythmic intensity,
coupled with Farrar's highly emotional vocals espousing his unique
philosophies: "Nothing to take back or exchange/ double engine
dharma express train/ always dreaming it's the search not the
find."
While The Search is a fairly logical continuation of the
older Son Volt, it is quite a bit of a throwback from where we
all thought this new, younger band was heading. Farrar proves
himself once again one of the most literate and thoughtful songwriters
in modern music, while stretching his musical boundaries to new
limits. Horns, pianos, and weird loops help to flesh out the sound
of The Search, bringing us back to Farrar at his most pure
and experimentally sonic.
-Embo Blake
Track Listing:
1. Slow Hearse
2. The Picture
3. Action
4. Underground Dream
5. Circadian Rhythm
6. Beacon Soul
7. The Search
8. Adrenaline And Heresy
9. Satellite
10. Automatic Society
11. Methamphetamine
12. L Train
13. Highways And Cigarettes
14. Phosphate Skin
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