Editorial Reviews
Wide Swing Tremolo
Music Review:
Music Review
Mendelssohn: Quatuors Op. 12 & Op. 13
Mysterien Sonaten - Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber
Music: Disco Fox Party V.2 [Original recording reissued] [Im
Panorama: Zouk Des Antilles V.2 [Import]
Revocation - A World Of Illusions 1989-2001
Mi Tango En Buenos Aries [Live]
Amazon.com
Son Volt's weary music, especially the deliberate voice and words of frontman Jay Farrar, is a comforting mystery; its suggestive flashes of phrase and image seem every bit as wise as they are inscrutable. On Wide Swing Tremolo, the band's third effort, the band's trademark blend of brooding guitar rock and atmospheric pedal steel is subtly touched up with dissonant harmonica, distorted vocals, and uncharacteristically loping rhythms. At its best, as on the dread fortune-telling of "Medicine Hat," the pulsing sound and dense lyrics reveal a kind of portentous mystery. Farrar obviously labors over his complex and poetic lyrics, but his idiosyncratic phrasing and slurred delivery (although always emotionally affecting) already slightly obscure his messages. Why he would choose to bury what wisdom he has to share in such a thick, unenlightening mix, remains a mystery of a much more infuriating sort. --David Cantwell
Entertainment Weekly
No one does the soulful twang-and-burn better than Jay Farrar and Co.