Post review:
The harder the times, the harder the rock: Unhappiness with the recent direction his career and his country have taken seemed to electrify Jay Farrar and Son Volt at the 9:30 club Friday.
Much of the music Farrar has made since the 1994 breakup of his storied ex-band, Uncle Tupelo, has been lyrically obtuse and musically boring. His solo career was eating into the supply of goodwill Farrar built up while with Tupelo and in the early days of his subsequent project, Son Volt, which disbanded in 2000 and has recently re-formed.
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But Farrar apparently wants to change course. "Words of Woody Guthrie ringing in my head," he sang on "Bandages & Scars," a song from Son Volt's latest CD, "Okemah and the Melody of Riot" that announces his new, comprehension-friendly agenda. (Okemah, Okla., is Guthrie's birthplace.) Farrar devoted much of the quintet's two-hour set to songs off the disc, and most were as easy to decipher as "This Land Is Your Land." And just as politically motivated: The mocking "Jet Pilot" targeted George W. Bush's National Guard stint, while "6 String Belief" updated the "This machine kills fascists" message Guthrie used to proclaim on his guitar. "A grass-roots insurrection will bring them down!" Farrar sang over guitars as fuzzy and loud as he's ever played. His lefty leanings were revealed again with a cover of the Clash's anthem "Armagideon Time."
But even when words failed him, Farrar's rock instincts were chillingly great. He wailed "ooooh ooooh oooh oooh oooh" over power chords on "Who," a tune as lyrically incomprehensible and melodically irresistible as anything on REM's "Murmur." In some past area performances Farrar has exuded all the personality of a palace guard. But on this night he delivered old Volt (including "Drown" and "Tear-Stained Eye") and Tupelo nuggets ("Chickamauga") with a vintage lack of restraint. He's back.
