Recorded on February 12, 1992, it’s a blistering set that includes 10 of the 11 songs on Trace, along with six Uncle Tupelo songs, a tune that would appear on Son Volt’s second album, and a cover of Del Reeves’ “Looking at the World Through a Windshield.” “We had been touring pretty continuously for about six months, so in a lot of ways, we had the act down, and in some other ways, there’s some looseness to it,” Farrar told me recently for a Wall Street Journal story. There’s no demo arrangement here that outshines the final version, which is how it should be: the full-band expressions of Farrar’s initial ideas allowed for subtleties in the songs that the scratchy, minimalist sketches weren’t intended to contain. Most of the differences are subtle: Farrar tweaked the lyrics here and there, dropped the arpeggiated intro on “Live Free” in favor of jumping straight into the meat of the song and replaced the “B-Bender” guitar he played to create a pedal steel effect on “Windfall” and “Out of the Picture” with actual pedal steel and fiddle, respectively. The demos, mostly laid down on a simple four-track cassette recorder, offer an instructive look at the evolution of the songs from their early incarnations to the polished final versions. In addition to remastered versions of the 11 original songs on Trace, the expanded reissue includes eight previously unreleased demos and a near-complete 18-song concert recording from a show the band played in New York early in 1996. ![]() ![]() Though Farrar’s focus has changed over the years, the 20th anniversary reissue of Trace is a reminder of his formidable musical prowess and the fearsome agility of the original Son Volt lineup, which dissolved after the band’s 1998 album, Wide Swing Tremolo. Rather, each band followed its own muse, and Wilco became the more visible-and often more acclaimed-descendant of Uncle Tupelo. Beach Boys one-upmanship that Trace and A.M. The subsequent paths of Son Volt and Wilco didn’t yield the sort of Beatles vs. The album was musically more sophisticated-the sturdy balance of quiet and loud, elegiac vocal harmonies, that dusty acoustic guitar lick on “Windfall” that opens the album-with Farrar singing like the seasoned road warrior he had become, and sounding as if he drew the lyrics from a deep well of hard-earned wisdom. Farrar reunited with original Tupelo drummer Mike Heidorn and teamed with Minneapolis brothers Jim and Dave Boquist in Son Volt to present an alternate viewpoint, and set an impressively high standard, with the release of Trace that September. When the group broke up in 1994, Farrar’s former bandmate Jeff Tweedy refashioned the rest of the latter-day Uncle Tupelo lineup into Wilco and presented his vision of Americana on A.M., released in March 1995. ![]() Son Volt’s 1995 debut remains a defining document of the ’90s alt-country movement, which singer and guitarist Jay Farrar helped spark with his previous band, Uncle Tupelo. Here’s the thing about reviewing reissues: context and perspective may change, and technology will inexorably advance, but songs that were great 20 years ago will generally still be great songs now.
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