Son Volt – A Retrospective: 1995-2000

At first blush, this seems a borderline proposition — a career overview of a band that ran for five years and issued three albums (notwithstanding the recent revival of the name, though only leader Jay Farrar returns in the new lineup). Add to that the widely accepted opinion that the band’s 1995 debut was easily its best record, and it’s perhaps difficult to find much reason for a newcomer to buy this collection rather than Trace.

Then again, A Retrospective: 1995-2000 is probably aimed more at the band’s long-entrenched fan base, and the disc does in fact offer quite a bit of worthy content for those folks. Only half of the twenty tracks here are taken straight from the official albums; the rest are demos, outtakes, compilation contributions and the like. And, as odds-and-ends fare goes, this is some pretty prime stuff (more so than, for instance, the extras included on the recent career retrospective for Farrar’s first band, Uncle Tupelo).

Of particular value is “Rex’s Blues”, a duet between Farrar and Kelly Willis previously available only on the hard-to-find Red, Hot & Bothered compilation. Willis and Farrar’s harmonies are gorgeously graceful, and the band’s exquisite slowing of the song’s tempo deepens the poignancy of its lyrics. The result is perhaps the best Townes Van Zandt cover ever recorded. Another standout among the seven covers here is an extended take on Alex Chilton’s “Holocaust”; Son Volt gives it a bit more backbone than Big Star’s elegantly fragile original, but the result is no less haunting.

Elsewhere, the band tackles masters such as Bruce Springsteen (“Open All Night”), Lead Belly (“Ain’t No More Cane”), and Woody Guthrie (“I’ve Got To Know”), while acknowledging their affinity for trucker tunes (“Looking At The World Through A Windshield”) and the early intersections of country, folk and rock (“Tulsa County”). While none of these covers are quite keepers — unlike their ace rendition of the Flamin’ Groovies’ “Shake Some Action”, a staple in their live set circa 1996 that sadly isn’t included here — they do help to reveal the roots from which Son Volt’s own music flowered.

The rest of the non-album fare includes an excellent live acoustic version of the Wide Swing Tremolo cut “Medicine Hat” and a pair of simple four-track demos from Trace (“Tear Stained Eye” and “Loose String”). Along with the album versions of “Drown”, “Windfall”, “Route” and “Too Early”, that makes six Trace cuts, and yet the album still seems underrepresented (it’s hard to imagine the omission of “Ten Second News” in particular). Such was the classic nature of that debut when it arrived ten years ago — and so it remains today.