Find a Son Volt - Straightaways first pressing or reissue. Complete your Son Volt collection. Shop Vinyl and CDs.Missing. Vinyl Records by Son Volt - Son Volt,Straightaways,Wide Swing Tremolo,Trace,Straightaways,Wide Swing Tremolo,On Chant And. Pristine Copy Of This 1995 Vinyl Rarity.

DRAWING FROM TRADITIONAL american music, 'Straightaways' plays out like a bittersweet chord with plenty of poetic metaphors based on singer/songwriter Jay Farrar's life experiences. 'Picking Up The Signal,' 'Last Minute Shakedown' and 'Cemetery Savior' are at once familiar Farrar constructs; his pastoral vocalese, a unique hopeful brooding - stop and start melodies - rippin' leads from his SG - backed up to the hilt by Dave Boquist (guitar, fiddle, banjo and lap steel); Mike Heidorn (drum kit); Jim Boquist (backing vocals and bass) and newly acquired traveling medicine man, Eric Heywood on pedal steel and mandolin - all add up to a very satisfying listening experience. The album opens with 'Caryatid Easy' and along with 'Cemetery Savior' and 'Picking Up The Signal' are the songs in rock mode. 'Been Set Free' brings you back to UT's 'Coalminers' from March 16-20. 'No More Parades' cooks a banjo boogie to beat the band, 'front door leavin' is the way that I'm feelin / twenty-eight days overboard.' Then there's the sweet lap steel and acoustic guitar interplay on 'Creosote' ('fate just runs you around').

On 'Back Into Your World' Jay proves yet again just how close he can come to touching this audience. The cleansing melody of 'Last Minute Shakedown' with it's therapeutic refrain: 'It's not easy to change / Not losing this thirst' is a fine piece of confessional songwriting. Straightaways is a tunefully sharp, re-feeling look, seeking sanctuary on the road and making it into music.

America's dashboard savior and search light is still burning bright.

If someone tells you he understands the meaning of Jay Farrar’s lyrics, he will lie to you again. Okay, maybe someone with a PhD in philosophy and literature grasps them, but probably not. There have been obvious signs – going back to Uncle Tupelo – he’s on a different intellectual plane from mere mortals.

Who uses words like farcical, paradigm, caryatid and workaday masses? In songs, I mean. Managerial Accounting Hilton Platt Solutions Manual Chapter 7. I’d say he’s on the same level as Rush’s Neil Peart, but if you’ve read enough Ayn Rand you can decode 2112. Nobody has a voice like Jay’s. That voice is what makes Son Volt sui generis – more than the writing, more than the punk-meets-country musical mash-ups.

It seems as tough to describe as his lyrics are to decipher. Jay’s songs are one subset I never attempt to cover on the rare occasions I play in public. I once called his ability to slide up and down the register without going off key as “dude can harmonize with himself.” A good friend – and a much better musician than I – did it one better: “He’s always about a quarter flat, but it works.”.

For most if not all Son Volt fans, 1995’s Trace isn’t just the band’s best album, but one of very few records that are the benchmarks for all of alt country that came after. Viewed historically, they have a point that’s hard to argue. Farrar recruited Uncle Tupelo’s drummer Mike Heidorn and the Boquist brothers, Jim (bass, backing vocals) and Dave (fiddle, banjo, mandolin, lap steel) for the band’s first iteration.

And thanks to VH-1, “Drown” became their one bona fide radio hit. That lineup would last for two more albums and tours, plus a one-off in 2001 for a benefit for Alejandro Escovedo. Wide Swing Tremolo signaled Jay’s entry into well, weirdness, and a couple of solo albums that were, frankly, borderline unlistenable. And then, a calm, lilting, reassuring change of pace in “Back into Your World.” If we were living still in the age of 45s, would there be a more perfect flip side to “Tear Stained Eye” on Trace? And as stated, decoding Farrar’s lyrics is best left to those invited to the annual MENSA picnic. Yet here is some rare, low-hanging fruit: “Leave this impasse, if you’re gonna leave anything. Just don’t leave here without speaking your mind.” Poetry, and set perfectly to a gently flowing acoustic guitar melody.