Son Volt – “Dust of Daylight”
Posted on | November 4, 2009 | No Comments
1. I have to admit — I slept on American Central Dust for a long time. I don’t fall into the group that thinks Jay Farrar is somehow inferior to Jeff Tweedy, or the group that thinks that Son Volt hasn’t changed its sound accordingly since their inception. I think more than anything, I just didn’t give it enough time to open up. Granted, the entire record shuffles by at a slower pace than previous Son Volt material, but in doing so, allows listeners to focus on the nuances of Farrar’s worn voice and his evocative, existential lyrics. On “Dust of Daylight”, he calls on shuffling country beat, accompanied by fiddles and a bright pedal steel to surround his woozy observations on heartbreak.
2. Farrar begins the song by looking back at a relationship that he now sees clearly — the “angels holding warning signs” acting as “prophets of doom”. The lyrics of this song do not connect to tell a complete story, instead creating the head-spinning feeling of a love gone wrong. His assertion that “love is a fog and you stumble every step of the way” explains the thrown together metaphors that make up the verses. Love doesn’t make sense any more than the absence of it, regardless of how providential it seems to be. “Everyone has their idols”, says Farrar, but “the search goes on”, explaining a life of wandering in search of something that might not exist.
3. Mark Spencer’s pedal steel provides a wordless echo of Jay’s sentiment, before he launches into the jumbled second verse talking about “words and faultlines every step of the way”. Farrar claims to be “out of luck in the worst way”, only compounded by the loss of love. He succeeds with “Dust of Daylight” in his understanding that music isn’t meant to be literature — that is, it is supposed to be heard, not read. His words, read flat on a page, have little cohesion at all, but the sound he evokes is a familiar one — the sound of loneliness, where nothing seems to make sense. As much as Farrar has proven to be a wordsmith (especially considering his recent Kerouac project), his ability to fill the gaps when words don’t work might be his greatest insight of all.
Wilco – Palladium Ballroom – October 9, 2009
Posted on | October 12, 2009 | No Comments
1. I had the opportunity to see Wilco for the fourth time on Friday night at the Palladium Ballroom. Though the band has gone through several iterations since the days when they might be considered “alt-country”, I believe they are putting on their best live shows with their current lineup. Drawing from all sorts of American musical influences, Jeff Tweedy and company took to the stage and promptly launched into “Wilco (The Song)”, a slightly tongue-in-cheek tribute to their fans.
2. An evening that saw Tweedy exchange shirts with a fan, go back and forth on his band’s policy of taking requests (do it through the website, please) and play a ten song encore, Wilco proved that while they might fall into a wealth of genres, their music is entirely their own. Recalling the layered sound of Summerteeth, they blazed through “A Shot In the Arm”, before sprinkling the first set with songs from their last three albums, particularly “Company in my Back”, with its stuttering intro and outro played to perfection and the woozy “You Are My Face”.
3. Though at times they showed influence of the Band (”Hoodoo Voodoo”) and the Stones (”Casino Queen”), Wilco has a sound all their own — due in part to the dueling keyboards of Mikael Jorgensen and Pat Sansone and the otherworldly guitar work of Nels Cline. Tweedy seemed to be in the best mood I have ever seen him in, as he joked with the crowd and thoroughly enjoyed the set. Ending with a scorching encore of rockers that included personal favorite “The Late Greats” as well as the proto-punk “I’m a Wheel” and the lurching “Kingpin”, Wilco showed their ability to bring together a host of distinctly American influences without appearing derivative at all. Capped off by a performance of “Jesus, Etc.” where Tweedy let the crowd sing the first two verses and choruses on their own, the band demonstrated their ability to make music that people can take hold of and make their own. If that isn’t success, I’m not sure what is.
All photos by Patrick Michels for the Dallas Observer. See the full slideshow here.