Son Volt's Trace - 10 years later

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Jay's masterpiece (one of 'em) was released 10 years ago to the day (19th). Figured it was worth a thread. Discuss

[Colorado Sun]

Holy Shite! How did we miss this??? Don't we need to change the color scheme of the site for a day and recite some kind of Jay loyalty pledge? This is a "Magna Carta" kinda day for our universe.

All Hail Jay! All Hail Trace!

A memorial spinning of the Trace disc will be commencing at Sun's residence later this evening with the traditional puring of the Jack Daniels sacrament and the blowing of the holy FranKGBincense....

-Sun

[Jeebs]

Oh man! Tonight it's Trace with a pour of Knob Creek. I might even stop by the Goodwill to pick up a new sipping glass.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

That's the spirit

[ironman]

Love it! THE BEST ALT.COUNTRY RECORD EVER MADE!!!

If you disagree you're a terroirist.

[TANEYTOWN]

Still holds up as a classic cd! A blue print will you for what an
" Alt Country " cd should sound like.

[Rick V]

Jay's masterpiece (one of 'em) was released 10 years ago to the day (19th). Figured it was worth a thread. Discuss

Good work, HighPlainsDrifter. I was recently wondering what the release date was on TRACE. I remember hearing about TRACE in the Fall of '95. I had never even heard of Uncle Tupelo but insticts told me that this was an album I should check out. I bought it in late November '95 and the rest as they say is history...... It sold me on altcountry and I've never looked back. This music was the perfect tonic for someone like me who was felling musically displaced by Cobain's departure and the rise of rap-core.

Still the best altcountry album ever released and a classic by any measure.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

terroirist.

Was that spelling intentional?

Party on, Rick V.

[Loon Rider]

Ten years? Well Trace has had a profound effect on me in that time. The metaphor of the road is nothing new in art and music but for me, only Joni Mitchell’s Hejira comes close to achieving this sort of transcendent journey over the course of an album. I adore this album. I think it’s damn near perfect and there are few superlatives I can muster that can do it justice. Trace doesn’t hit you in the face – it’s too clever and subtle for that but it has an awesome power of its own that almost imperceptibly inveigles its way into your soul.

Never mind that its one of the best ‘road’ albums - it’s one of the best albums ever; a travelogue, a quest for truth and understanding with a huge spirituality at its heart. It is a genuine work of art and I think many of us recognise it as being central and crucial to us here on ACT. I remember about five years ago it was number one in the ACT All Time AltCountry Top Ten and ‘searching for a truer sound’ became the site’s signature. And in Windfall it contains one of the greatest altcountry songs.

Trace is arguably one of the best quietly loaded and concise album titles. Trace as an indication of what is or has been; a beaten path, a track, a footprint; a mental change caused by learning; something which can be barely detected; a line measured by an instrument; to follow step by step; to mark or outline. It is all there on this album. But most of all it seems to be about a basic human desire to leave behind more than just a footprint in the sand, with some sort of idea of why we’ve been here.

It doesn’t really deal with human relationships as such but it is anything but emotionally detached and in some senses it has more humanity than any number of lovelorn break-up albums. Trace is a harmonious collection of paradoxes and contradictions that accurately reflect the lives we lead – that’s why it means so much to us. We’re all prey to notions that we’re being cheated; that old values seem to matter less; that we struggle to make sense of things and life is over too quickly; that clues come close and still we miss them. Trace almost fixates on ‘the travelling hands of time’ and their remorseless march but it is also timeless. It is an album that is simultaneously painful and soothing and ultimately life affirming.

There is great poetry here. Farrar’s imagery is almost spellbindingly powerful – storms shattering lives; streets that only go one way, waterborne disease…

Looking for a purpose from a neon sign

And it’s hard enough soaking up billboard signs
You scorch and drown alive
Never knowing why
The levee gates are open wide
There’s a cough in the water, and it’s running into town.

Yesterday’s dust and heartache
As the pieces fall like candy when you’re young
Medicine when you’re old

Above all it is great music. It is the quintessential altcountry album. The ballads are wonderful and no less powerful than the more rockier numbers, which betray the punk origins of the band.

Farrar ‘s outlook can be bleak but is not blinkered; it is well-observed but not servile to life’s difficulties. He sounds weather-beaten, melancholy and morose, sometimes desperate but never defeated, despite us all being ‘living proof that nothing lasts’. It works because of its modesty and honesty – the simple truths that Gram Parsons said needed to inform any song with genuine meaning and resonance.

Jay’s voice is very poignant and is the pivotal presence – backed up by terrific musicianship that is loose and ragged but never undisciplined. Boquist’s use of pedal steel, Dobro and banjo sensitively ground the music without it ever sounding like parody. Trace is passionate without being pretentious, and despite being forged from an urban landscape is full of pastoral yearnings. And indeed, to some extent Jay has been the bellwether for many of us in this genre of music.

Yeah, there is great poetry here.

We’re just threading this needle for life

When we’re all passed over the rhythm of the river will remain
And it will remain

Too much living is no way to die

Take away this Columbus Day
No more bones on display

Everywhere in Trace there is a lurking threat of things on the margin, just outside our range of vision or beyond our control. There is the constant spectre of inundation. There’s a lot of water and drowning in Trace. No wonder that so many of us like to play it in the car when it’s raining.

Silence knows, can’t drown a heart

The discovery of something that hearkens back to an earlier age is another common theme but also underlines the timeless quality of these songs. When I hear ‘sounds like 1963…’ I’m struck that the American writer Don DeLillo pinpoints the year of JFK’s assassination as the time when Americans lost their sense of collective narrative, that things have fallen apart, become fragmented and more difficult to comprehend since then.

Over the falls in a barrel is where the answers have gone.

And also in the Townes Van Zandt eulogy, Too Early (terrific accordion from Dan Newton):

Never seen half of what you’ve seen
Real life never quite adds up
The road goes on when the faces don’t
Word of mouth never tells the truth

I remember making a journey by car from Liverpool to Hull late on a winter’s night a few years ago. I had several tapes with me but ended up playing Trace four times back to back (I always harmonise on Tear Stained Eye and Out Of The Picture). It is a haunting album but is nevertheless like a good friend you’ve known most of your life.

Never feel alone, you’re really not alone

I still have some of the quotes people made from the Top Ten poll five years ago.

One said: “I would be a lesser man without this album. The fact of its popularity gives hope to the human race”.

Another was so convinced of its universal appeal, he said: “Buy this album and if you don’t like it, send me the receipt and I’ll pay for it”.

And lastly, in the words of the late Chuck Gamble, one of our erstwhile colleagues on the boards:

“Windfall is what country music is supposed to sound like. Tear Stained Eye is an instant classic. This is a beautiful album.”

[ironman]

terroirist.

Was that spelling intentional?

Party on, Rick V.

YEs! Tongue & Cheek "terroir".

[bastardofyoung]

Loon...perfect.

Its one of the few great driving records that also stands up to a stationary listen in the living room.

[track11]

Great post, Loon!

[Nortwoods]

In which Loon makes the perfect post for the perfect album. Outstanding.

[Sandusky]

Amazing post Loon!!! I'm working on mine, will post later today.

[Sandusky]

My grandfather was a truck driver. He died on the road in '75, somewhere near Fort Payne, Alabama around midnight. I never got to know him since I was only 5 at the time, but through photos and stories I got a sense of him. Ramblin' man, traveled down south mostly between Alabama and Texas. My uncle said he was king of the honkytonks. And he was quiet, not a man of many words. The first time I heard 'Windfall' I could feel his ghost beside me in the car. Just a fluke, I had never heard anything off Trace and only knew Farrar from Anodyne. But that song hit me like a ton of bricks, lit up the night as I drove 65 South with words near Biblical in their truth, weary with experience and longing and too much livin'. May the wind take your troubles away. I understood. I felt closure with my grandpa, an empathy for the truck drivin' men who roam the lonely byways and highways of our land. I don't know what I'm trying to get at, but Loonrider set the bar too high for me to write a comprehensive post about this great record. 'Windfall' is more than a song, at least to me. Jay Farrar works on a higher plane than most. That song is as meaningful as the sunset or the sky itself. It's just one of those songs. Trace is overflowing with songs like it too. Every note on it is the truest sound you'll ever hear.

More later.