SON VOLT - Wide Swing Tremolo
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CD Details
Artist: SON VOLTEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2011-10-28
Music Label: WEA/Reprise
Soundtracks:
- Straightface
- Driving The View
- Jodel
- Medicine Hat
- Strands
- Flow
- Dead Man's Clothes
- Right On Through
- Chanty
- Carry You Down
- Question
- Streets That Time Walks
- Hanging Blue Side
- Blind Hope
Music reviews of Wide Swing Tremolo
Music Review: sleeping giant awakes, stretches, shakes off imitators
Rating: 4 Stars
Son Volt's third full-length album, Wide Swing Tremolo, opens with "Straightface," a genuinely thrilling song in the context of frontman Jay Farrar's songwriting canon. That's because Farrar has been a magnet for both copycat worship and rock-critic backlash, the latter a new byproduct, which ensued as a response to the band's lackluster second effort (1997's only-decent "Straightaways"). "Straighface" opens with an almost AC/DC-esque riff and blues lead, then launches into a clanging rocker that transcends even the earlier, grittier, more populist punk-and-country tunes he fired off with Uncle Tupelo. In the song, Farrar spews atypically optimistic ("wake up and carry you to a new a day") and defiant ("demonize what you don't understand") lines in a lurching, fat, f*ck-off cadence that almost reminds one of a hip-hop MC (from Missori, of course) and somehow brilliantly combines elements of Bob Dylan, Monster-era REM, and the Beastie Boys' (yes, the Beastie Boys) "So Whatcha Want," the last because of the band's use of some sort of vocoder to give Farrar's vocals a hairy, fuzzy quality. In short, the song rocks, and certainly serves as a sharp slap in the face to pretenders to the "alt-country" throne for which Farrar has no use and to rock scribes who've blasted the band as "somnambulists." Varied fun follows as well. The next song "Driving the View," again recalls REM, except that Son Volt has more muscle to flex than REM, and Michael Stipe's voice is no match for Farrar's. But then, whose is? Seven albums into his career, Farrar is quietly carving a place beside such rural-music legends as Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, George Jones, and Gram Parsons. In fact, were we to have a shootout showdown, I will GIVE you, as bullets, the voices of Williams, Cash, Jones, Parsons, and two of your other favorites. I'll take just one--Farrar's--and I'll leave you flat on your back with a smoking bullet in your belly. And right on cue, Farrar steps up to the legend plate with "Medicine Hat," perhaps the best song he's written, a hailstorm of apocalyptic lyrics set to a syrupy pedal-steel guitar (or a regular guitar sounding like the pedal steel) and sung with an absolutely gorgeous, yearning melody. It's an instant timeless classic from a man who's good for at least one an album. One of the most surprising elements to the album is the loose air of relaxed experimentation. There are two instrumentals (the short, superfluous "Jodel" and the warped, pretty "Chanty"), neither of which match the grandeur of Tupelo's "Sandusky." There are catchy stabs at radio play in "Flow" and "Question." There are beautiful, heartbreaking, existential ballads ("Streets that Time Walk" and the phenomenal "Hanging Blue Side"). Finally, the album ends with a bopping, bluesy number ("Blind Hope") that contains a, gulp, spoken word piece (has Farrar been lifting with Rollins?). The album's closer also deserves notice in that it further develops a seeming album's-end fixation with Ron Wood's "I've Got My Own Album to Do:" "Trace" closed with a cover of "Mystifies Me;" "Blind Hope" opens sounding musically like something off that album as well. Ultimately, the album negates suspicion that the band had blown the wad with "Trace." One hopes that Son Volt will continue with the looseness and extra instumentation that was missing from previous albums (which didn't matter on the perfect "Trace" but gentrified songs on "Straightaways"). Could an orchestra and "A Man Needs a Maid"-type songs be next? Let's hope so. I'm living on blind hope for that, Mr. Farrar.
Description of Wide Swing Tremolo
Wide Swing Tremolo by SON VOLTThis product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
Son Volt's weary music, especially the deliberate voice and words of frontman Jay Farrar, is a comforting mystery; its suggestive flashes of phrase and image seem every bit as wise as they are inscrutable. On Wide Swing Tremolo, the band's third effort, the band's trademark blend of brooding guitar rock and atmospheric pedal steel is subtly touched up with dissonant harmonica, distorted vocals, and uncharacteristically loping rhythms. At its best, as on the dread fortune-telling of "Medicine Hat," the pulsing sound and dense lyrics reveal a kind of portentous mystery. Farrar obviously labors over his complex and poetic lyrics, but his idiosyncratic phrasing and slurred delivery (although always emotionally affecting) already slightly obscure his messages. Why he would choose to bury what wisdom he has to share in such a thick, unenlightening mix, remains a mystery of a much more infuriating sort. --David Cantwell
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