TS: Wilco or Son Volt

Living right is easy. What goes wrong--you're causing it.

tough call. Son Volt's first album shits on all but two Wilco albums (Summerteeth, Being There), but went downhill fast after that.

I am with you, jonviachicago. Trace is so much better than anything Wilco's done, even Summerteeth and Being There, I'd say, yet Wilco gets all the love somehow. I feel for Jay.

Have you guys ever given Sebastapol a chance? It's as good as Trace in my book.

Wilco. The strings on that song "Jesus, Etc." are excellent.

No, thanks for the tip. I was so disappointed by the decay from Trace to Wide Swing Tremolo I sort of gave up. I'll pick Sebastopol up.

NEITHER THEY ARE BOTH TEH SUXOR

To me Son Volt was overrated. Jay Farrar was the McCartneyesque lead singer who wrote like George Harrison; Jeff Tweedy was the Harrison figure who ended up having the McCartney talent, crossed with Lou Reed.

Alfred, I love that. Not sure what it means, but I love it.

Son Volt: "Caryatid Easy" and "Creosote" are classics.

Wilco: "Not for the Season" and maybe "Heavy Metal Drummer" are classics.

So I'd say that SV has more of a slow sad kind of beauty, while Wilco has a bit more range.

Son Volt: six feet wide and a mile deep. Wilco: a mile wide and six inches deep. I have moods where I favor one or the other, and moods where I need both. But I have a smidgen more respect for Son Volt, so if pressed that's the side I'd take.

"Son Volt: six feet wide and a mile deep. Wilco: a mile wide and six inches deep."

That's a great way of putting it.

Thanks, Puffin. To clarify: Jay Farrar wasn't as talented as he thought he was, while Jay Tweedy was comparatively underrated (now he's overrated).

(Offtopic to Alfred Soto: I actually have an unrelated theory about nearly every musical partnership being classifiable as Lennon/McCartney or Simon/Garfunkel. In a Lennon/McCartney, one half is more talented and one half is more outgoing. In a Simon/Garfunkel, one half is both more talented AND more outgoing. This explains quite a lot of bands, and I can sometimes glance at a band and say, "Ah. Two McCartneys and a Garfunkel" or "Three Garfunkels and a Lennon."

But I keep trying to refine the theory and come up with an equally glib and pithy sound-bite classification for Jagger/Richards. Something to do with whether you have an aesthetic vision or you're really good at making someone else's vision concrete. It needs work.)

Yeah, the Jagger/Richards partnership achieves a sui generis sort of symbiosis, no?

I see them as ideal collaborators: preening narcissist, pseudo-fag, chief conceptualizer meets pirate-haired ruffian, low-key narcissist, instinctive musician. I'd imagine both are pretty lousy lovers too.

After several months of discussions and planning with the original Son Volt players—Dave Boquist, Jim Boquist and Mike Heidorn—Farrar was unable to reach acceptable business terms with the original line-up. “Times change, and so do people, I guess,” reflected Farrar. “While I was looking forward to the reunion aspect of working with those guys, it just wasn’t meant to be. It’ll be liberating to get down to work with a different group of musicians. I had always envisioned Son Volt as a vehicle for my songwriting and expected it to evolve over the years. When I reformed the original band this year to record our track for Por Vida [the Alejandro Escovedo benefit album (Or Music)], it seemed like we might be able to extend that two-day session into two years of recording and touring--but it doesn’t look that way now.”

--jayfarrar.net

Jay Farrar is kind of a douche-bag (check the goatee). Tweedy's a guy I want to get seriously drunk with. Like,

ME: dude, seriously, think about it: ROBOTS. They're sort of fucked up, huh? I mean, as an idea.

JTWEEDs: I can see that. They are sort of weird...but, you know what's really been bothering ME? Depression and disfunction. Like, dark stuff. Well, it LOOKS like normal stuff but secretly it's dark.

ME: Huh, weird. Hey! Let's go throw waterballoons at middle-schoolers!

JTWEEDs: (looks sad for a second, then:) You know what? That sounds like a GREAT idea!

(EXEUNT)

Jay Farrar on the other hand would just ply me with Xerox copies from his many many "song diaries" ("Oh these? Whatever. I've only got, like, 275 of them. No bigs. I've been writing since I was 17, so, you know...Wanna read one?") and tell me about how other so-called artists don't get what he's doing. Also, check my goatee.

This doesn't change the fact that Trace is the center of my musico-emotional universe or that Son Volt sort of fell off, well, immediately. Sure, there's some outstanding songs on Straightaways and Wide Swing Tremolo, but they just can't hack it against finding all of Trace at the age of 14. Somehow I think Farrar has realised this and uses it as an excuse to never change anything about his formula ever again forever.

Wilco on the other hand is exclusively in the business of making concept albums. EXCLUSIVELY. There hasn't been a single Wilco album that hasn't been built around some readily identifiable theme:

"A.M. -- Get it? We're radio friendly Tupelo! Cities 97 will SHIT!"

"Being There -- It's a FUCKING DOUBLE ALBUM. Isn't that enough?"

"Summerteeth -- Country is just so....boring. I know: technology!"

"Y.H.F. -- .....dont' know. haven't listened to it. Uh, the really popular Concept album? (see OK Computer)"

"A Ghost Is Born -- The not-so-popular one."

TWO PERTINENT AND ULTIMATELY DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS:
(a) Jay Farrar has never written a song that could even crudely be described as "fun."
(b) Wilco has had an artsy and B&W (!!!) documentary made about them that received wide critical and popular acclaim.

"Drown" is great fun, though!

...it's not "fun" like Heavy Metal Drummer. Which means I Like This Song Even Though It's Totally Fucking Cheesy.

Seriously, it's the cheesiest. Jay Farrar could never not take himself so seriously.

"Heavy Metal Drummer" - well, it's a bit too mumbly to be fun, isn't it?

Mumbly, maybe. That's just Tweedy's style.

"Playing Kiss covers, beautiful and stoned."

Cheesy. Absolutely. Actually doing it? Great. (sub Hendrix)

Does anyone really care that it's cheesy? Nah.

(Wait. No. Alex in NYC.)

Tweedy : Farrar :: Bobby Kennedy circa 1968 : JFK

It's all pretty straightfoward: duller, more-polished older brother meets sudden, tragic demise while younger, more passionate, firey idealist brother moves into the spotlight & unites the hopes of an entire nation (or at least Cook County).

Granted this analogy would work better if Tweedy had been taken out during the Being There recording sessions, thus revealing his potential (while at the same time leaving the relatively sloppy, over-extended final product as the fault of the estate).

Also, cheers to Giboyeaux. You know Tweedy is flipping his shit over the future US Robot Army as recently reported in the NYT.

...there's a future US Robot Army? Are you in it, Unit WJC7462, or is that the prison number the city of Wilmington gave you on arrival? You know, just in case you need one later. I mean, EVERYONE else seems to.

And, really, Farrar's never going to break-through with the goatee....he looks like B** S*******'s older brother, N***, from high school. That's a not a look that says "art." That's a look that says "Wendy's."

Also, where does Teddy Kennedy fit into this? Is that Ryan Adams?

Oh definitely.

Ryan : TK :: llor n kcor : Chappaquiddick

and "New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to Battle"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/16/technology/16robots.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1109962932-tvuqZkRlkOKdQG6IIVPL5A

Of course, that comparison means granting a quiet, though well-respected place in the future of rock and roll to Ryan, which may be too generous for someone whose next album will likely be a vampire concept affair.