The pantheon housing the musical elite of the '90s builds its foundation on four pillars, bands that explored virgin territories and scenes only to emerge with archetypes for inspired successors.
The arcane wit and lo-fi indie spontaneity of Pavement, Nirvana's ability to combine raw angst with the power to express it and Radiohead's insatiate thirst to cipher every genre of alt-rock through an emotional and creative firestorm, make the first three patent choices worthy of upholding the '90s legacy, but, as has rarely been evident, the most deserving choice is not the most obvious.
No, the band whose remnants illuminate it as the best band of last decade, however subjective and capricious such a classification may be, sadly and ironically also bears the title of the most under-appreciated, partly because, unlike the aforementioned bands, it never truly fostered a desire for commercial success.
Its original three members emerged from indigent Belleville, Illinois using simplicity to root out the complexity of its world. The results were legendary. No other band captured its punk-rooted tenacity while simultaneously breathing life into folk legends - myths of prior times lived by elders and passed on through time. No other band cultivated such a genuine lonesomeness that seeped through every word as if it was a last plea in the face of guaranteed destruction.
No other band was Uncle Tupelo.
"89/93: An Anthology" offers a glimpse into Uncle Tupelo's world: chartering maturation that melds the extremes of folk, country and punk into a seamless whole; uncoiling the narrative within the band that eventually pitted the stoic traditionalism of Jay Farrar with the burgeoning pop sensibility and exuberance of Jeff Tweedy.
From first album "No Depression," the title song - a reinterpreted Carter Family gem excavated from the 1930s - and "Screen Door" offer heartfelt slices of Americana devoid of irony. "Down here, where we're at, everybody is equally poor / Down here, we don't care what happens outside the screen door," Tweedy sings, his dusty voice crackling as it reaches for each word standing on a fence between resignation and content.
On "Graveyard Shift," Farrar's lament to small town oppressiveness, and "Outdone," presented as a 1989 demo with a tinge more melody and its abrasive feedback-laden coda removed, Tweedy, Farrar and Mike Heidorn hit with an unkempt tenacity. Like the best punk, the chord progressions eschew grandiosity, but kinetic energy grows fervid as patches of aggression burst through with a violent urgency.
A pedal steel and acoustic guitar dress Farrar's weathered voice at its most tragic on "Whiskey Bottle," but when Farrar gives into his weakness for the bottle, the band's dramatic flair ruptures with electric guitars as he belts out, "A long way from happiness / In a three hour away town / Whiskey bottle over Jesus / Not forever, just for now."
The second album, "Still Feel Gone," polished the edges of "No Depression." The acoustic arrangements outgrew the nostalgic folk-roots and shimmer with a delicateness that accentuates the album's introspection ("Still Be Around"); the energy of its rockers became more refined with a closer eye on structure ("Gun") and a newfound optimism laughing at its own shortcomings ("Watch Me Fall").
The acoustic "Looking for a Way Out" trades the epic thundering of its "Still Feel Gone" incarnation for a soft-spoken approach that turns it into a response to Gram Parsons' "Sin City," one that suggests that the trap of small town life can be just as perilous as big city corruption.
With one song, though, "Gun," Tweedy, whose essentially vibrant and playful bass skills always seem overlooked, announced his presence as more than Farrar's sidekick. "Just don't tell me which way I ought to run / Or what good I could do anyone / 'Cause my heart, it was a gun, but it's unloaded now / So don't bother," he sings with a heart-wrenching forwardness.
|
|
|
The softer shadings hinted at earlier were fully explored on the Peter Buck-produced album "March 16-20," the most haunting and intimate collection of acoustic balladry since Springsteen's "Nebraska." Recorded in five days, the band meanders through songs both new ("Grindstone," a song effortlessly shifting through paces) and traditional ("Coalminers"). Adopting not only the words of the folk annals, UT captured the essence and spirit of American roots to produce an album free from time, both of their youth and of the current music trends.
"Anodyne" went for broke.
Their last and only major label album, it thrived from Farrar and Tweedy's emerging competition, but astonishingly, the two mesh better than ever before. Their voices, such a brilliant contrast layer each other as each backs the other up, bitterly swallowing the words of his bandmate ("New Madrid," "Chickamauga").
By that point in the band's career, Tweedy had blossomed into a complete songwriter, his pop sensibility shining through on "Long Cut" and "We've Been Had." Farrar had grown more cryptic, searching for universal themes while maintaining his sense of desperation.
Uncompromising and creatively breathtaking, the two's creative collaborations were bound to implode, but in their wake remains the work that testifies to their greatness.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
