Like Guided By Voices during its heyday or the Cowboy Junkies, the arrival of a new Son Volt album is greeted with a welcome but not treated as an \u201cevent.\u201d It\u2019s one of the prices a band pays for continuously putting out albums that aren\u2019t departures from its previous releases. <\/p>\n
In the case of Son Volt, the band took an extended hiatus in the late 1990s and founder Jay Farrar then resumed Son Volt in 2005 with the release of Okemah And The Melody Of Riot<\/i>. Even with a virtually new lineup, the album simply sounded like another Son Volt album, meaning solid, straightforward rock with equally straightforward lyrics. <\/p>\n
Son Volt\u2019s latest album, The Search<\/i>, is another in the same vein. It has all the classic Sun Volt elements: Farrar\u2019s grizzled voice, clean, chugging electric guitar and snare-heavy percussion. But on The Search<\/i>, Son Volt has expanded its sound to include keyboard, organ, horns and other elements (e-bow!). On Son Volt\u2019s Web site, Farrar said \u201cWe utilized different instrumentation to fit each song.\u201d <\/p>\n
Even with this new palette of instruments, the songs remain solidly rooted in Son Volt\u2019s traditional, country-ish sound. The beautiful opening track \u201cSlow Hearse\u201d recalls ’70s-era Neil Young and \u201cAction\u201d has a very Jayhawks\/Silos vibe. The new blood doesn\u2019t depart much from the sound of Son Volt\u2019s original lineup, even with the addition of ex-Meat Puppets bassist Andrew Duplantis. <\/p>\n
Depending on your mindset, Farrar\u2019s lyrics can either be deliberately simple or borderline country rock clich\u00e9, sometimes in the same song. In \u201cMethamphetamine,\u201d Farrar opens the song on a bland note by singing \u201cI took the night shift \/ Another nickel on the dime \/ Time to play it straight, make it different this time \/ Still waiting to meet the next ex-wife.\u201d But he brings the character into three-dimension form with a desperate line like \u201cWould you take me back North Carolina \/ Would you take me back Arkansas.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cPhosphate Skin\u201d closes The Search<\/i> on a quiet, if unspectacular note. In \u201cHighways And Cigarettes,\u201d the second-to-last song, Shannon McNally lends her world-weary vocals to the song and provides a much-needed standout element to the song. A few moments after \u201cPhosphate Skin\u201d ends, you half expect to hear another track if you\u2019re not keeping tabs on what song is on the album. Instead, you\u2019re left with a slight empty feeling, not necessarily wanting more, just a more solid song to end an album. <\/p>\n
The Search<\/i> is a worthy addition to Son Volt\u2019s collection. It opens up enough musical avenues for this version of the band to freely pursue. However, for listeners, it can be a frustrating listen as the songs succumb to samey-sounding country rock, despite the addition of new instrumentation. There\u2019s enough here to reveal new surprises on the fifth, sixth and seventh listens, but The Search<\/i>\u2019s biggest problem is getting listeners to come back to that second listen. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7934],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-40242","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-son-volt","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40242"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}