Son Volt’s ‘Riot’ best since original band’s ‘Trace’
Son Volt
“Okemah and the Melody of Riot” (Legacy) ••• 1/2
After Uncle Tupelo split in 1994, the smart bet for solo success was on Jay Farrar, not Jeff Tweedy.
Farrar had the better voice of the pair, a world-weary baritone copied by countless alt-country rockers. Six months after Tweedy’s Wilco released “A.M.,” Farrar one-upped him with “Trace,” the exceptional debut album by his new band, Son Volt.
Over the next decade, Wilco became the critics’ and fans’ favorite, while Son Volt dissolved and Farrar struggled to find an audience for his solo CDs. Last year, he announced he was re-forming Son Volt, but on its first day in the studio, the band broke up.
So Farrar recruited new band members to record “Okemah and the Melody of Riot,” Son Volt’s first CD in seven years and its best since “Trace.” For the most part, Farrar and his new mates (who come to Spokane’s Pig Out in the Park on Sept. 2) stick to the old Son Volt/Tupelo blueprint: twangy pop songs with switchblade guitar riffs.
“Jet Pilot” jumps from a whisper to a scream as Farrar rips apart President Bush’s military record, while “Bandages & Scars” invokes the name of Woody Guthrie as it surveys a country polluted with toxic waste.
On the more mellow side, “Afterglow 61” and “Gramophone” pay loving tribute to sounds of yesterday, while in “6 String Belief,” Farrar debunks the fallacy that rock is dead.
“Rock and roll around my head/Alive and kicking,” he sings in a voice that’s so earnest and soulful, you’re inclined to believe him.
Thor Christensen, Dallas Morning News
Ying Yang Twins
“U.S.A.: United State of Atlanta” (Tvt) •••
The usually rowdy duo D-Roc and Kaine speak softly but carry a big hit on their new release with “Wait (The Whisper Song).”
The salacious earful of sexual come-ons is just one of a loose suite of songs that includes “Pull My Hair” and “Bedroom Boom.” Elsewhere, they get it crunk with banging jams such as “The Walk” and “Shake.”
But there’s more to the Twins than lighthearted get-your-freak-on and tear-up-the-club tracks. The soulful “Live Again” looks at the harsh realities a stripper faces, while “23 Hr. Lock Down” bemoans the drain of life in prison.
The Al Green-influenced “Long Time” and politically tinged “Ghetto Classics” reveal even more faces of the twins.
Steve Jones, USA Today
Paul Anka
“Rock Swings” (Verve) •••
Known for such hits as “(You’re) Having My Baby,” the 63-year-old Anka creates a curious amalgam on his new album, performing rock and pop songs of the 1980s and 1990s with big-band backing.
The effect is kind of cool. Anka shows a decent high range that conjures up Bobby Darin and generates some dramatic heat on the Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s a Sin,” and manages to swing through Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” with reasonable sass and elan.
But the brassy horns get tiring, and it’s odd to hear a tune like Lionel Richie’s “Hello” done as a Vegas revue. Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” is interminable, and the dark world of Kurt Cobain’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is better left untouched by the Anka treatment.
Karl Stark, Philadelphia Inquirer
Sufjan Stevens
“Illinois” (Asthmatic Kitty) •••
Unabashedly excessive, Sufjan Stevens’ “Illinois” is a 74-minute song cycle mixing quiet acoustic ballads and extravagantly orchestrated set-pieces that survey the history of the Midwestern state, from Carl Sandburg to Abraham Lincoln, the Chicago Fire to the World’s Fair.
As on 2003’s “Michigan,” the first in a purported 50-album project, Stevens uses the geographic-specific references within impressionistic, often personal narratives. “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” contemplates the human propensity for sin (it’s one of several songs with overt Christian themes) and ends with Stevens admitting, in his quiet tenor, “I am really just like him.”
Orchestral crescendos and choral counterpoint lend grandeur to the clever “Come on Feel the Illinoise,” but they cross into pretentiousness when they seem imported from “Oklahoma!” in “Metropolis.” “Illinois” overreaches sometimes, but it’s impressively ambitious.
Steve Klinge, Philadelphia Inquirer