Reviews UPDATED 13 APR 2005

Son Volt, Okemah and the Melody of Riot (2005)

It's hard to really dislike anything from Jay Farrar. His voice is such a singular sound, surely one of the best and most distinctive American voices of the last couple decades. His ex-partner Jeff Tweedy, who otherwise exceeds him in creativity, will sing the rest of his life without ever mining that degree of effortless earnestness. Which makes it all the more disappointing that the new Son Volt record is unexceptional.

An overhaul of the band's membership, which hinted at the potential for a re-energization, has puzzlingly resulted in a more bland, flat, and repetitive sound. Farrar's fellow musicians display little imagination, energy, or variety in their accompaniment. Those tracks that do break the mold, like the awkwardly emotive "World Waits for You", only highlight how few directions Farrar has managed to successfully extend his voice or songwriting style beyond his Uncle Tupelo roots. It's not in Farrar's genes to extend to the experimental-pop realm of Tweedy's Wilco, but even an energetically familar record would suffice. An average Son Volt record (which this very much is) is still better than most of what's out there--the great opening track, "Bandages and Scars", should be an energizing draught for any Farrar fan--but the promise of 2001's Sebastopol seems to be in retreat.

My advice: rejoice that Farrar is still in fine voice and still making music, but buy the new Son Volt retrospective set or their classic first album, Trace, to appreciate what this band is capable of.

Beck, Guero (2005)

After turning his entire musical approach on its head with the gorgeously sad Sea Change (which was the first Beck album I took seriously, largely because it seemed to be the first to take itself seriously), it seemed that Beck was in something of a musical quandary: where to go from there? Sea Change was, thematically and in the artist's own life, about a moment in time. But could he really go back to his early slacker-fusion of offhand beats and random lyrics without it seeming hollow and cheap?

Guero doesn't answer the question of where Beck is headed from here, but it does manage the difficult task of holding things together and in a sense reconciling his pasts. The result, depending on your outlook, may be either the best or worst of both worlds. On one level, it's a return to his earlier records' quirkiness and genre-hopping pastiches, with plenty of catchy beats, cryptic lyrical fragments, and kitschy sound-effect nonsense. But at the same time, there's a certain gravity between the lines here--a couple of the numbers are more pensive, there's a subdued quality to the vocals, and the overall tone is sort of like a party with a big storm on the horizon--groovy but with a hint of foreboding. To me, this translates into a desire to move on and have fun creatively while still acknowledging what he's come through, and the result is a somewhat uneven but artistically successful record.

By reclaiming elements of his past while not hiding from maturity, Beck seems to have navigated this difficult passage, landed on two feet, and given himself a wide-open door to wherever he wants to go next.

Ketil Bjornstad, The Sea II (1998)

This is a truly remarkable album. The degree of sensitivity and shared intuition demonstrated by the four players is unparalleled. ECM's usual high-quality production reveals every nuance of the instruments, and the players make the most of space and dynamics to achieve dramatic and emotional effects.

Gentle, dark, spacious textures dominate, with an occasional buildup of tension and power--"Brand" contains one of the most magical, moving moments I've heard in music, with the ensemble building from quiet to a surging, urgent crescendo, ending with Terje Rypdal's guitar scattering & shattering into dissonant shards, like sparks in the night sky or the distant cry of seagulls. All of the players have their moments in the spotlight, though Rypdal and David Darling (cello) create the most drama, with Bjornstad's piano and Christensen's whispered drumming adding lush, shifting beds of accompaniment.

Members of this group have played together for many years, and you can hear that experience throughout this record. Each of the four contributes in amazingly subtle ways to the others' passages, and the overall effect is one of a rich, natural sound with a mind and spirit of its own. This is modern music of the highest order--deeply felt, complex, and rewarding.