Additional personnel: Eric Heywood (pedal steel guitar); Dan Newton (accordion); Marc Perlman (bass); Craig Krampf (drums).

Recorded at Salmagundi, Northfield, Minnesota in November and December 1994.

Personnel: Jay Farrar (vocals, guitar); Dave Boquist (guitar, fiddle); Dan Newton (accordion); Craig Krampf, Michael Heidorn (drums); Jim Boquist (background vocals).

Recording information: Emerald Sound Studios, Nashville, TN (11/1994-12/1994); Salmagundi Studio, Northfield, MN (11/1994-12/1994); Sixteenth Avenue Sound, Nashville, TN (11/1994-12/1994).

Jay Farrar always provided the darkest, grittiest moments in Uncle Tupelo, so it comes as no surprise that Son Volt is a rawer record than A.M., the first album by Wilco, a band led by his former partner Jeff Tweedy. Throughout Son Volt's debut, Trace, the group reworks classic honky tonk and rock & roll, adding a desperate, determined edge to their performances. Even when they rock out, there is a palpable sense of melancholy to Farrar's voice, which lends a poignancy to the music. Trace isn't a great step forward from Tupelo's last album, the lovely Anodyne, but it is a fine continuation of the ideas Farrar has pursued over the course of his career. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Like a phoenix rising from the much-grieved-over ashes of Uncle Tupelo, Jay Farrar's Son Volt brings a balance of heart and mind back to the country-rock community. Which isn't all that surprising, considering it was Farrar who added that indeterminable sense of melancholic reserve to UT's albums in the first place. Son Volt retains Farrar's Gram Parsons-like ideal that traditional music works best when contemplating simple emotional truths not diluted by narrative or melodic cliches. From his ex-UT partner, Jeff Tweedy (leader of Wilco), Farrar also learned that the thick and speedy guitar textures of punk rock are just as adept at baring the honesties of the soul--that punk rock has become the modern folk music.

TRACE constantly wanders between such apparent opposites. There are fiery, passionate declarations propelled by crunching and thick electric chords that never fall prey to roots-rock sloganeering--songs like "Loose String," a mid-tempo stomp with the dark observation that "too much living ain't no way to die," and "Route," a charging rocker that paints the life-on-the-road cliche within rarely explored borders. There are also soft, thoughtful musings on the virtues of life's searches ("Windfall") and of metaphysical existence ("Tear Stained Eye"), lifted above the fray by Dave Boquist's heavenly accompaniment on various string instruments.

What unites these disparate pieces are Farrar's dark sweeping world-view and the plaintive voice with which he presents it. "When we're all passed over, the river will remain," he asserts on the bleak "Live Free," as a wailing lap-steel veils a vintage Stones beat. It is an image that exposes the pastoral as a timeless ideal, and man's reign as temporary--an image that weighs heavily throughout TRACE, and exposes Farrar for the folk philosopher he is.