"May your conscience serve you well," Jay Farrar sang last night, his distinctive voice metallic, splitting the difference evenly between shine and rust. The alt-country troubadour, whose always seemed to doubtlessly steer his own ship, lead his five-man twangy rock band Son Volt through a set at Irving Plaza that traced a long course without chronology, covering the group's debut album up through recent release American Central Dust.
Farrar didn't seem at odds with his conscience one bit. As surely as he unsmilingly served up pedal steel poetics like new record opener "Dynamite," he did it with a band that shares its name with the Americana four piece that released 1995 debut Trace, but none of the original players save for Farrar. That's just the St. Louis-based musicians' way, seemingly having been the case since he disbanded Uncle Tupelo, his much revered and hooch-drunk outfit that featured Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, 15 years ago.
Though a vocal fan pushed for old Tupelo fav "Moonshiner" at throat-tearing volume, Farrar didn't budge. He played some obligatory Son Volt old faves, but even as the dude's dourly recited something as near-perfect as "Tear Stained Eye," you could sense in Farrar's dedication to the lyrics that he's playing it not for the appreciative yelps from the crowd—tall guys in Manhattan blue collar threads frequently heading to the back-area bar for another Bud Light tall boy—but because he's still keenly aware its the best thing he ever wrote.
The amassed showed true appreciation and patience for the most part--even a hint of piqued interest when the Volters offered up "Big Sur," a Kerouac-inspired cut from an upcoming Farrar project with Death Cab's Ben Gibbard—though one new mid-tempo song too many got the chatterers in the crowd going during the appropriately named "When The Wheels Don't Move." The attendees didn't quite all refocus 'til "Damn Shame," a number plucked from Farrar's solo catalog that brought simple, pleasing guitar licks to the fore.
Farrar's trotting out the songs he wants to play, and when it intersects with what we are desperate to hear (I would have lost my shit if they'd pulled out "Medicine Hat" or "Whiskey Bottle"), the Son Volt frontman will follow his muse infinitely more than our feeble directions. The fans may want to keep revisiting a collective past—the guy to my left texted an old friend as I looked over his shoulder: "at a son volt show in NYC. not the same without u here"—but Farrar didn't much banter last night, let alone take requests.
