REVIEW: Son Volt, Wide Swing Tremolo (Warner)
- Tracey Bleile
Son Volt has woken up and found that you can go home again, literally. After 1997's somnambulistic Straightaways, Wide Swing Tremolo brings the return of stirring, smartly-turned out music transmitted on waves of early fall winds. The evolution comes from a sharper, cleaner, and overall ever more harmonious sound - approaching superior live quality that surpasses the confines of a studio. With a deft blend of many middle-American standards; country, blues and a solid grounding in garage-rock - Son Volt personifies musical synergy by being greater than the sum of these parts. Tremolo is the result of this innovation, a release that unfolds in three dimensions to reveal the quiet brilliance of its creators.
The mood shifts gears on every song - from the opener "Straightface" abounding with snarly guitar and wailing harmonica and Farrar's voice boiling out through a vocorder which flows into the rolling bass, vibrato guitar and sweet harmonizing of "Driving the View". The juxtaposing of tempos is important, but even more integral to the development of the band is the way they have worked within the song structure; either to incorporate many layers of sound or use a few as possible while still achieving maximum effect. Take two of the softer songs - the spare arrangement of mostly mandolin and slow march time snare drum of "Dead Man's Clothes" against the buzzy guitar, shimmery keys and drum loops of the disc's closer, "Blind Hope" and you have a sense of what they were, or were not (as they case may be) setting out to do. And the pattern continues throughout and enforces the strength of each individual song in the patchwork of the whole.
The freedom to experiment came the discovery by Farrar and company of an abandoned lingerie factory right next to their hometown of Belleville, IL as a homebase for rehearsing, and eventually, recording this release. The band noted that being able to leave a huge variety of instruments in one place to be available at all times was an impetus to use every one while writing, and having the freedom to try the same songs many different ways before committing - a luxury not always available when you're on someone else's studio time budget.
On a song like "Medicine Hat" or "Flow" there is a sense of the band becoming a more cohesive unit, and while Farrar's evocative and image-based lyrics are still a centerpiece, the sound has become fuller and more complete. Son Volt is still immediately recognizable from the instant you hear Farrar's lost-soul twangy voice, but again, there is a marked feeling of experimentation, in the pacing, and not staying directly on the path of one style or another. It is refreshing when the Americana sound doesn't have to rest on resorting to violins and a lapsteel on every song. Even a slower country-flavored number like "Carry You Down" has a less-than-typical structure and an interestingly abrupt ending. And that is what draws you through this release; thinking you know what you're going to get, and instead it's full of great twists and a sense of urgency.
The delicious irony of creating at a place you can call home is that you can travel farther in your mind when you know you have a safe place always waiting for you when you're ready to come back. So heed Farrar's call on "Driving the View" that "When you're driving the view / Living it down / With just enough time to revel" you had best go exploring now while you can.
