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Monday, August 11, 2003 np: jay farrar - terroir blues the new jay farrar is amazing. it took me nearly two months to track it down which is really irritating. it was released on 24th june of this summer and despite my best efforts to locate it at major music retailers across charlotte (with whom i can still very easily find jay's prior solo album as well as the uncle tupelo re-issues and son volt albums) i came up short until i ventured into my favourite independent retailer, gate city noise, here in trusty ol' greensboro. but how does it stack up to jay's other work, josh, you ask? it's very good. honestly, i think it's better than sebastopol and the critics, for the most part, seem to agree that they are at least on equal footing despite their disparate approaches. no depression, your and my favourite alt-country magazine, gave it quite a rousing review. if you link to the allmusic review that is linked in the now playing you'll find a really interesting take on how jay managed to step forward, while stepping backward. he's certainly no mc skat kat, but then who of us is? rather, as the review notes, he does something similar in idea to what he and the rest of uncle tupelo did with their stunning and revelatory march 16-20, 1992 album. he strips his music down, several songs leaving a bare minimum of instrumentation (usually jay's voice, guitar and one other instrument - very cool, on the sweet and lulling "out on the road," he mines a bit of tim buckley/van morrison with the addition of a flute) to carry along the feeling. and it works. tremendously. the one complaint that can be lodged (hah! eat that, jeremy) against the album is its sheer mass. it clocks in at right under an hour with twenty-three tracks. but only twelve are full fledged new tracks with one of those being an instrumental. the rest are made up by a seven-part set of instrumental interludes, similar to the ones that peppered sebastopol and the last son volt record, and four re-treads of songs already on the album. the re-treads are interesting and different from the original incarnates and, though i'm loathe to use this as a comparison, echo the way wilco laid out two versions of "outta site (outta mind)" for their being there double album. not that wilco invented that way of approaching an album, but it's the second time that a major alt-country player has done something like that this year. (the jayhawks also surrounded their latest record with two versions of "stumbling through the dark.") but it's a small complaint mainly because of how well farrar has the album cobbled together. the instrumental portions are rarely distracting, if anything giving the listener a gentle break in the action before resuming the show. and by starting and stopping the album with the same songs (okay, slight caveat; the album actually ends on the final instrumental piece, but the track before that is the re-recording of the lead track) he effectively creates an album that is definitely of one piece, while uniquely defining each track along the way. -- originally i didn't think i was going to type much tonight, but i got really into reviewing this album. further proof that i would love to do music journalism while teaching full time. here's hoping i have what it takes to do that some day. i'll update you all on how student teaching is progressing soon. we should have internet in the apartment by the end of next week (23rd) so bear with the slow updates until then. posted by J. Neas | 8/11/2003 08:27:00 PM
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