Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne Poll

Chickamauga, Acuff-Rose, We've Been Had

Give Back the Key, New Madrid, We've Been Had.

Give Back the Key, Steal the Crumbs, New Madrid, Slate, well, I could keep going 'cos this is a great album. I'd never heard of them and saw some blurb in the Rolling Stone best of the year edition. thank you whoever wrote that. Voted for Chickamauga.

It's a fantastic album.

Mr Browning has a prediction

Chickamauga, New Madrid, Give Back the Key.... I love how The Long Cut comes on right after the rustic takin-its-time one-two approach of Slate and Acuff/Rose.

But because this is the final album, and because of the whole mood set with that fact, and because "Every star that shines in the back of my mind Is just waiting for its cover to be blown" precedes "each star is a setting sun" by seven or eight years, I gotta go with We've Been Had.

But I duuno. Ask me tomorrow and it'll likely be Chickamauga.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukOEXaGIQLw

Oh, I voted Chickamauga btw.

if you find yourself standing
at the end of your line
looking for a piece of something
maybe a piece of mind
fed up, lost, and run down
nowhere to hold on
tired of, take your place at the end son
we'll get to you one by one

no light ever shines
dead end tears that dry
maybe a waste of words and time
never a waste of life

every hour will be spent
filling a quota, just getting along
handcuffs hurt worse
when you've done nothing wrong

no thanks to the treadmill
no thanks to the grindstone
there's plenty of dissent from
these rungs below

the clockwork of destruction
hanging low over our heads
always a smokestack cloud
or a slow-walking death

no light ever shines
dead-end tears that dry
maybe a waste of words and time
never a waste of life

no thanks to the treadmill
no thanks to the grindstone
there's plenty of dissent from
these rungs below
the clockwork of destruction
hanging low over our heads
always a smokestack cloud
or a slow-walking death

no light ever shines
dead-end tears that dry
maybe a waste of words and time
never a waste of life
maybe a waste of words and time
never a waste of life

maybe a waste of words and time
never a waste of life

my first instinct is to go with "Chickamauga" for its sinus-clearing solo & its terrific lyric mixing place & the status of a relationship; "no authority can clean up this mess we're in", referring to the TVA, is just all-time. I drive through Chattanooga fairly often & we sing this song every time. "Chickamauga" will win this poll & it'll be all right.

but I voted "Fifteen Keys" since it won't get enough love here. a lurching blues with a fab mix, dobro riffing with the notes lingering by the end of the song so that it drones, nothing left to lose. resignation! I bet the title's a great joke that nobody'll ever hear, so private. when we didn't know the back story it was a different song & now of course it's easier to understand at a literal level. I used to dream of playing this song at a church revival, just me on the pulpit, telling the congregation "danger, slow! the sign ahead". apocalypse now in your soul! nothing left to lose. I been there.

Well then I hope you got the keys to your heart back.

pretty classic album, not a bad song on here. perfect give and take between the two songwriters. great guitar sound too. probably "slate" is my fave, but "give back the key" is close! saw sahm jump onstage during a Son Volt concert to sing it, the only time anyone in the band looked like they were having a good time.

New Madrid, but there are a bunch of gems on here, like Chickamauga, Long Cut and No Sense in Lovin'.

We've Been Had from the 'dinner tray incident' in '97 when Wilco played it on the Being There tour is enough to clinch the vote for me. Uncle Tupelo is one of the best punk bands of the post-hardcore generation. They didn't invent alt-country (or whatever) and they know it -- they just felt like playing some Carter Family tunes mixed with the Minutemen (and a ton of Dinosaur, especially from Jay now that I think of it) and it fucking clicked because they could play. I'm pretty drunk right now, commenting on one of my favorite bands, and I wish I could've been drinking Stag all night. Maroon, yellow, blue, gold and gray indeed.

BUT! No Depression and Still Feel Gone are better, in that order.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Wow, the self-conscious overlaughter on that Tweedy monologue upthread is nearly as excruciating as the dickish pointlessness of the story.

Voted "Chickamauga."

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Love this album

listening to this right now. pretty timeless record, sounds better than a lot of 1993 albums, I think.
let's have a tupelo reunion, come on bros. i couldn't go see them on their last tour because i was too young for the venue. regrets.

also, "give back the key to my heart" is a great campfire singalong.

i saw them once touring for Still Feel Gone (outdoor show opening for gear daddies in austin mn)

saw them on the last tour...things seemed pretty tense at that point, farrar and tweedy were placed comically far apart onstage, little to no interaction between them

i remember when i saw the still feel gone era show, i was up front and tweedy was chewing tobacco and had a "ring" in his back jeans pocket where he kept his tin, we thought that was cool cuz we all chewed

yeah my older brother saw that anodyne show and said farrar looked like he had a foot out the door the whole time.
forgot how good high water is. and even the slightest song "no sense in loving" is kind of great. maybe better than anything on AM, which it seems a precursor to.

UT was actually my intro to online bootleg trading i think...someone on some AOL message board sent me a tape of their last show and some son volt demos. innocent days.

Chickamauga, Acuff-Rose, We've Been Had

― Juggy Brottleteen (ENBB), Saturday, October 22, 2011 2:18 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

how did i not know u r a tupelo fan wtf

Ha, tyler. The Postcard was the second mailing list I ever subscribed to. (The Replacements' Skyway was the first.)

listening to this right now. pretty timeless record, sounds better than a lot of 1993 albums, I think.

Glad to see 'Chickamauga' won (though I voted for 'Long Cut') -- still makes Tweedy's AM stuff pale in comparison.

i think that it was the "no depression" forum I looked at? can't remember, so long ago in the 90s.

how did i not know u r a tupelo fan wtf

― new rap guy (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Monday, November 7, 2011 12:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Because I'm full of surprises?

"Acuff-Rose" is such cheerful drama, fiddle bursts played like you'd normally play a fuzzed-out massive riff, with the by-then-typical UT stop-start rhythm. such a jam.

otm xp

God what an absolutely perfect record

What a band

amen brother.

no moral ICU

I listened to this album for the first time in 20 years or so on New Year's Day and found it quite enjoyable.

Man it’s been so long since I listened to this. Thanks for the reminder UMS.

just finished tweedy's memoir — some good tupelo remembrances. funny that after Farrar announces he's quitting the band, Tweedy listens back to Anodyne and is like "ohhhhh i guess I should've seen this coming?"

I'm not sure I've ever heard much Uncle Tupelo, for some reason. But the Tweedy memoir made me queue it up!

Hadn't read this before...interesting recollections (from everyone but Jay and Jeff):
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/uncle-tupelos-anodyne-at-25-oral-history-wilco-733327/

thanks for the link tarfumes, can't wait to read that

It's low-key one of the most bitter breakups in rock history from what I can tell

I don't know if the part about Tweedy sleeping with Farrar's GF is true but there seems to be something there, it's one reunion I would bet a million bucks won't happen

part of the mystery of the break-up is how excellent the first son volt album is, a peak jay has somehow never managed to approach again. if i had to bet on which of the two of them would go indie-nova after trace and AM i would not have put money on wilco

yeah the failure of son volt still blows me away (& I'm including Trace). Anodyne is probably my favorite album of the 90s, and by contrast Trace is a snooze, and everything he did after that (with a few exceptions like "Blind Hope" off Wide Swing Tremelo) is too.

Tweedy's excellent at finding ace collaborators. He's a careerist like 70s rockers, and will follow better musicians than him. That's not a small thing, and he's made great music doing that. I think of him like Bono in that regard.

So true (xpost). I saw Farrar maybe a year ago(?) doing an acoustic performance of Trace, in full, followed by a stream of samey songs from other albums of his. The drop-off in quality after Trace was dramatic. He looked great, though, and his voice sounded as good as ever. I wonder if he cares about Tweedy’s success. We’ll probably never know.

I love Trace almost as much as Anodyne. But yeah, it was a steep and swift drop-off in quality after Trace. Whatever the next album was (Straightaways? Something like that?), it sounded like a bunch of Trace b-sides and cast-offs.

The first Son Volt show I saw (summer of '96...might've been their first tour), they ended their set with a beyond-raging "Chickamauga," then did Cheap Trick's "Downed" for an encore -- I never woulda guessed it, but that song was made for his voice.

yeah I saw them live right around then too, maybe a year or so later, "Chickamauga" and a cover of "Last Time Around" were the only living moments of the night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukOEXaGIQLw

Pitchfork will probably get these guys back together in time... I saw them (UT) 2x and Son Volt (ca. Trace) 1x, never saw Wilco strangely. UT was an extremely professional sounding band in an era of ramshackle live performances from the underground.

Considering why they parted and the fact that Wilco ended up a pretty popular group, I don't see it happening.

Haha, true... Wilco is probably much more popular than I realize.

But back to Jay, I also thought Sebastopol was a record that got very little acclaim. His backing band was Steven Drozde & Jon Wurster, and had Gillian Welch sing harmony on a duet that begins with the line "Anyone caught speaking Esperanto was thought crazy or headed for jail..." (need to post that to the best first lines thread).

Wilco is really big...there are so many Wilco fans that probably have no idea Uncle Tupelo existed

That RS oral history is great, Coomer's story about Wilco listening to "Trace" is amazing.

Also: Jay said the words that mattered. He said, “The only person I’m sick of in this room is you,” and pointed at Jeff.

Ahh band meetings where everyone lays it on the line, fun!

haha, yeah, brutal.

a UT reunion still seems super unlikely — there would have to be major effort on Farrar's part, I think, and that probably isn't going to happen. I could see some kinda random one-off, like the benefit that mould and hart played, but that's it.

would have to listen to it again, but yeah, i remember liking Sebastopol quite a bit at the time

yeah i guess i never listened to anodyne in the context of the later stories that came out

What the hell were we thinking
Before the fire burned out?
I can't find you now
And I didn't know you then

Watch it separate in two
Whatever the day wants it to
Finding out that the worst is true
Finding out that it can escape you
Slings and arrows completes the score
Always leaving, wanting more
And I try to throw it away

damn

Thanks for posting the oral history link, Tarfumes The Escape Goat.

You're welcome!

(with a few exceptions like "Blind Hope" off Wide Swing Tremelo)

god this is a good song. i always forget about it

I loved that first Son Volt album. Saw them on that tour and they were excellent. A year or two later I saw them again just before they released the 2nd album. What a difference. It was as if the entire band had taken valium. Every song was done at a crawling pace, with no energy or enthusiasm at all.

At one point, they played the song Ten Second News from Trace which is exceedingly down tempo. When they finished, my buddy turned to me and said, "Somehow they managed to slow that one down."

The album came out and any buzz they had was gone forever. That 2nd album still stands as one of the great momentum killing records.

I hadn't thought about this album in ages until my mom texted me a photo the cassette case of a mix I made for her* that had 3 UT songs on it. I remembered how obsessed my friends and I were with this album -- so obsessed that I wanted to share this band with my mom!

*that had been inside her car's trunk since the mid-'90s

I thought this was a pretty great song but I could never get through the whole album
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_6nx7zZzj8I

RE “Ten Second News” oddly enough that was one of the more interesting performances when he played the entire album at the show I saw. They had two pedal steel players going at the same time, creating a wall of sound behind his voice and guitar. Pretty cool. The rest of the show, as you might expect, stuck very close to the best. Closed it with a cover of Rainy Day Women that just seemed a bit dull and out of place.

How great would it be to hear Farrar have to sit through an hour-long Maron interview

UT on Early Conan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy3WkIfgkSQ

all-time great band

somehow never seen this thread

i'm a Jeff over Jay guy 100 times out of 100, but this thread underrates Straightaways, imo. lots of good songs on that one, as well as Wide Swing Tremolo.

agree that it's steeply downhill after that, tho. the "country" record he made (Honky Tonk) wasn't bad. and the New Multitudes record he made with Jim James, Will Johnson and Anders Parker was pretty good.

looking back, it's crazy that he agreed to make a record where he worked with other musicians to put unused Woody Guthrie lyrics a decade after Jeff did the same thing.

anyway, i just wrote a review of Cruel Country and it's not bad ... Jeff is still cool ... but holy moly, his output from 1991 to 2001 was pretty untouchable.

I remember the Melody Maker review of 16-20 1992. I used to adore Farrar's vocals and saw him as the natural "star".

Jeff kinda looking/grinning like Kim Deal in that Conan clip, imo.

Might be the best album of the 90s tbh

“Looking back, it's crazy that he agreed to make a record where he worked with other musicians to put unused Woody Guthrie lyrics a decade after Jeff did the same thing.”

Always thought the same thing. What a weird love. There’s a video on YouTube wherein he goes through a bunch of guitars he put up for sale on Reverb. So interesting to hear him talk for once. Dude is a mystery.