A+ Son Volt
Trace: 20th Anniversary Edition
Rhino
It's been 20 years since Jay Farrar emerged from the wreckage of his first band, Uncle Tupelo, with a new group and a stunning debut.
Farrar assembled former Tupelo drummer Mike Heidorn along with Minnesota brothers Jim and Dave Boquist to form Son Volt. Their first album, Trace, was a gorgeous collection of Rust Belt landscapes, highway poetry, dying towns and observations from an America closer to AM radio than CDs and an emerging Internet.
Rhino has given Trace the anniversary packaging it deserves with this two-disc set that includes the original album, eight demo tracks and a live recording from a 1996 concert at the Bottom Line in New York.
Trace managed to fuse gentle and profound acoustic tracks like "Windfall" and "Ten Second News" with blazing rockers like "Route" and "Drown."
Farrar had moved from St. Louis to New Orleans and was spending a lot of time driving back to St. Louis and up to Minneapolis to rehearse and record. The results are impressionistic lyrics filled with rural imagery and a sense of restlessness. "We're all living proof that nothing lasts," he sings on "Route," while somehow sounding almost optimistic.
The demos -- solo takes that find Farrar sketching the bones of the tracks that the band would marvelously flesh out -- are mostly acoustic. The live disc has most of Trace's highlights plus a good selection of Uncle Tupelo tunes ("Slate," "Anodyne," "Chickamauga," "Looking for a Way Out," "Fifteen Keys") and an early version of "Cemetery Savior," a song that would end up on Straightaways, the second Son Volt album,
It's no surprise that Trace retains its power and stands among the best albums of the '90s (some of us have returned to it faithfully these past two decades). This expanded edition is a reminder of just how good it is.
Hot tracks: Those mentioned above, along with the cover of Ron Wood's "Mystifies Me," "Tear Stained Eye" and the live cover of Del Reeves' "Looking at the World Through a Windshield."
-- SEAN CLANCY
B Steve Martin and Edie Brickell
So Familiar
Rounder
Steve Martin and Edie Brickell weave a warm, endearing and lush musical landscape in their second record together.
Martin, on banjo, and Brickell, on vocals, touch on themes of love and loss over a dozen songs they co-wrote. Producer Peter Asher creates the perfect space for the songs to breathe.
Brickell, as she has since breaking onto the scene in the late 1980s with the radio hit "What I Am" with her band New Bohemians, perfectly invokes her engaging vocal style over Martin's banjo.
On "Won't Go Back," which draws you in immediately with its toe-tapping hook, Brickell also flashes tough-as-nails resiliency: "I've been there, I've done that, I'd go anywhere, but I won't go back."
And Martin, the closest thing to a Renaissance man there is in the entertainment industry today, has real chops on the banjo. He's no Bela Fleck (who lends his virtuoso banjo playing to one track), but he doesn't have to be.
Together, Brickell and Martin are a formidable musical duo, and it's a treat to hear them sweetly singing together on "I Have You."
Hot tracks: "I Have You," "Won't Go Back."
-- SCOTT BAUER,
The Associated Press
B+ Joanna Newsom
Divers
Drag City
Joanna Newsom's albums need to come with footnotes. The first single from the luminously talented yet difficult-to-parse indie rock harpist's fourth album is called "Sapokanikan." It's an American Indian word for a parcel of land that is now part of Greenwich Village. It also rhymes with "Ozmandian," a reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1818 sonnet "Ozymandias," which is about empire and decay, among other things.
Which is not to say that Newsom's music is first and foremost about the words. Her voice remains an acquired taste. But the 11-song Divers, recorded in collaboration with helpmates such as popwise classical composer Nico Muhly and Dirty Projectors indie guru Dave Longstretch, is artfully and meticulously composed. As Newsom explores themes of love and loss with seriousness and a sense of humor ("The longer you live, the higher the rent," she sings in "Leaving the City"), hooks emerge on songs like the haunting title track to keep you coming back for more.
Hot tracks: "Leaving the City," "Divers."
-- DAN DELUCA,
The Philadelphia Inquirer
B+ Kinky Friedman
The Loneliest Man I Ever Met
Avenue A/30 Tigers
Singer-songwriter Kinky Friedman, known for his biting satires in song, is also a best-selling mystery novelist and former Texas political candidate.
On this, his first album of new material in nearly 40 years, Friedman throws his fans a real curve ... an album of rich interpretations of tunes by Tom Waits, Willie Nelson, Warren Zevon, Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan as well as his originals. There's even a couple of standards -- "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" and "Wand'rin Star," from Paint Your Wagon.
It's a bittersweet, melancholy album imbued with regret and ache ... with shards of hope and romance. It would be right at home with the new Joe Ely album and other Americana genre recordings.
The only thing outrageous is a title of two -- not the songs themselves, one of which (by Zevon) can't be in print. The other -- Waits' "A Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis" -- is subdued and emotional.
The high points are Friedman's "I'm the Loneliest Man I've Ever Met" and Haggard's "Hungry Eyes."
There's not a smirk or sense of parody in earshot.
Hot tracks: Lerner and Lowe's "Wandrin' Star," "A Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis," "I'm the Loneliest Man I Ever Met."
-- ELLIS WIDNER
Style on 11/10/2015