Tune in to Jay Farrar & Co.

I’m not sure how I missed it until now, but Jay Farrar and Son Volt have been putting out a lot of good music since the break-up of Uncle Tupelo. I’ve been a fan of Wilco, Uncle Tupelo’s other spawn, for a few years now and knew about Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy's former bandmate and fellow songwriter, Jay Farrar. I’d heard good things about Farrar and Son Volt, but was content just absorbing Wilco's material, which I assumed was the best stuff to emerge from the Uncle Tupelo progeny. That was a bad assumption.

After just a few listens to Son Volt's new release "The Search" (briefly reviewed below), I got the urge to go back and check out the rest of the Farrar material I'd overlooked the past few years... It's always cool when you get turned on to an artist who has already released a solid catalog of albums for checking out. I'm just getting started, but digging everything I'm hearing so far, especially Son Volt’s album Wide Swing Tremolo. Farrar has some incredible songwriting chops. After immersing myself in Farrar & Co.’s music for the past few days, I now consider myself sufficiently educated to authoritatively proclaim that Farr and Co. are terribly underrated and underappreciated by the public at large and the music industry itself, even the journalists and critics.