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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Jay Farrar: Back to the Future
Thursday 18 September @ 13:02:13 |
 by Andrew Brantingham
Seems like no matter how much he tries, Jay Farrar can't help sounding a little like himself. Farrar's new album, Terroir Blues, finds the 36-year-old artist and alt. Country icon striving to twist, undermine, explode and generally make strange the wonderfully atavistic sounds he has made since the beginning. It's this restless spirit that's always been at the heart of Farrar's creative vision (despite being pitted as a Luddite against his “visionary” former bandmate Jeff Tweedy because of the slower rate he chose to incorporate mechanical sounds into his music). It's what compelled him to walk away from Uncle Tupelo in 1994 just after it had finally been picked up by Reprise Records, the creative itch Farrar had to scratch when he put his successful follow-up band Son Volt on “extended haitus” at the dawn of the millennium And yet, and yet…
So let's just cut to the chase, then, and be through with the list-making and the smirking descriptions. Terroir Blues includes (but, he hastily adds, is not limited to) such devices and experimentations as heavy, meter-breaking echo; an eastern-inflected cello-and-guitar duet; six short, backwards-tracked instrumental breaks (rather frankly entitled "Space Junk" I-VI—they sound like X-Wing dogfights); and multiple versions of several songs. Terroir Blues is, in short, a rather startling record. It's not wankery, mind you. It's not art-rock; it's not prog, and it sure as hell isn't Uncle Tupelo. It's Jay Farrar, and it's quite good.
Farrar seems happy with it, but he's been around long enough to know that some 15 years into the professional music making game some people won't be pleased unless he turns back the clock to '93 and starts singing explicit coal miner anthems again, beer in hand and flannel shirt flailing. "I always try to strike a balance," he says while speaking via telephone from his St. Louis home, "of acknowledging the past while letting it be known that what I care about is the present. I acknowledge the reality that a lot of people are going to be more interested in what I've done in the past than what I'm doing now; just because it's something they're already familiar with and they've made their connection to it. It takes a little while for newer things to sink in and find their place." "Sink in or be completely ignored I guess," he adds, chuckling.
While Farrar strives eagerly forward, his past fans out behind him, the legacy of his youth-penned anthems like "Whiskey Bottle" never trailing far behind him. He's not trying to escape or forget his musical legacy though—the same spirit that has always informed his music flows through Terroir Blues, the seemingly bottomless well of acoustic guitar hooks that always sound unique and universal at once. There are—behind, below, and all around the dueling X-wings—soft, sad steels and piano. Farrar's lyrics are still raised on heartache and hope: "Maydays of mercy, can't wait it out/ Remembrances of pride, guilt, laughter and luck/ Hard is the fall but your heart is still brand new." And, of course, there is still the same voice—it sounded like a man at the end of the line even when its owner was 20. It rings as true today.
Farrar also seems to be looking back past his own beginnings as well. While the bulk of Terroir Blues is decidedly planted in the new millenium, a handful of tracks have old souls. "Dent County" is a piano-and-pedal steel ballad that winds its way through the first half of the last century. "On the Road" is sparer yet, the vocals buoyed by 12 string guitar and flute. Says Farrar of the track, “In my head it sort of hearkened back to maybe really early blues of like a drum and fife duo, that sort of thing. Which I haven't actually heard much of or anything, I just liked the idea of that kind of early blues framework."
To erect a slightly strange and ambitious album on the foundations of centenarian forms and ideas is no easy task. Records like this often end up as patchwork and pastiche, divided against themselves and running off in hundreds of different directions. Terroir Blues is probably not as cohesive as it could be, but it artfully treats a difficult problem. The inherent ambivalence of the project also helps to explain the multiple tracks: "During the recording process I was trying out different instrumentation and started shooting for different textures,” explains Farrar. “When it came time to combine all the tracks together it was really difficult figuring out what versions of songs to choose, so I finally just decided to include a lot of the different versions on there. I'm aware that it's sort of an unwritten rule that you don't do something like that. But over the years as a fan I've seen other people like the Flaming Lips do it and enjoyed it, so I just went for it."
The approach succeeds because the alternate treatments of each song are sufficiently different to warrant the inclusion of both. We don't simply hear acoustic versus electric or an extra track or two. The alternate versions of "Hard is the Fall," for example, are united by melody and instrumentation, but the addition of a relatively simple effect creates startling differences. The second version is a classic Farrar track, a lovely countrified tune that would be in place on any of his albums. The first version, however, is treated with so much echo that the track threatens to rip itself apart—the result is not a folk song, but a cascade of evanescent melody.
It is this need to take a fresh look, to tear the past open while embracing it, that seems to drive Terroir Blues. Some of it is uncomfortable; it may even be self-indulgent. But it's natural. Rarely can the past truly be made new, but when it happens, it sounds pretty nice.
Jay Farrar plays Wed., Sept. 24, at First Avenue with Canyon (who will back Farrar during his set). 6 p.m. $10 adv/ $12 door. 21+. 701 First Ave N., Mpls. 612-338-8388.
Be sure to download an mp3 of Jay Farrar's All of Your Might from Terroir Blues.
You can find out more about Jay Farrar by visiting his website.
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