Anodyne

Uncle Tupelo

album cover

The Swan Song of a Trailblazing Band

Uncle Tupelo crawled out of the factory town of Belleville, Illinois, in 1990, making loud Clash-like guitar noises while playing strange homemade hillbilly songs. The band, led by songwriters Jay Farrar (who went on to form Son Volt) and Jeff Tweedy (who molded Wilco, see p. 860), wasn't the first band to create "alternative country" or "Americana" music, or to blend electric guitars with banjos and mandolins. But it was the first since Gram Parsons to effectively expand the style's mythology, with a mix of gingham and leather, Woody Guthrie's wisdom and the Minutemen's rage.

This is the last of four Uncle Tupelo albums. All are populated with conniving drifters, miners courting danger, and other hard-luck cases one might encounter on the lonesome highway. The musical textures start out in a thick haze of feedback, and gradually, with each album, acquire clarity and nuance. By the time of its third effort, live-in-the-studio March 16–20, 1992, the band's emphasis had shifted completely—to delicately embroidered acoustic atmospheres supporting weighty, sometimes abjectly spooky murder-ballad narratives.

With Anodyne Uncle Tupelo circles back to rock, in an amazing way. The overall vibe is front-porch music made by a group of friends. But the band allows undercurrents of anger and dislocation to bubble to the surface of its songs. Everything is charged with possibility and volatility. Even when the arrangements are pleasant and straightforward, songs like the indignant "We've Been Had" feel like unsettled punk-rock powder kegs.

The tunes are often credited to Farrar and Tweedy as a tandem, but that is purely for publishing purposes: The two are in different orbits. Farrar's apocalyptic, transcendenceseeking odes pull listeners into a desolate, often grim landscape, while Tweedy's chipper two-beat curiosities and open-hearted love songs offer a comfortable resting place, if not a touch of hope. This deft balance of opposing forces (country against rock, bitter against sweet, contentment against disillusionment) makes Anodyne riveting from start to finish.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1993, Sire/Repris
Key Tracks: "The Long Cut," "Give Back the Key to My Heart," "Chickamauga," "Anodyne," "We've Been Had"
Catalog Choice: March 16-20, 1992
Next Stop: Sixteen Horsepower: Folklore
After That: The Jayhawks: Tomorrow the Green Grass
Book Pages: 795–796