The narrator imbues the song with a sense of gritty romance, sweetened by gorgeous harmony vocals from Shannon McNally-among the best of the many backing voices Farrar’s had, on one of the finer road songs he’s penned in recent years.Ī roiling ode to learning the hard way, this song from Uncle Tupelo’s Still Feel Gone seethes with churning guitars and angry lyrics flung at a world seemingly rigged against making an honest living. “Highways” is a passenger-seat view of life on the road, in all its nomadic glory. Notable Nugget: The lead guitar part on the original recording is some of long-time sideman Kelly Joe Phelp’s best-recorded work.īristling with bright, overdriven guitars, the opening song on 2005’s Okemah and the Melody of Riot-Son Volt’s first album after a five-year hiatus-signaled Farrar’s return to high-octane rock and lacerating social commentary on what is perhaps his most politically conscious album to date.īest lyric: “Piecemeal solutions will only leave scars, bandages for nosebleeds in this city of artificial stars.” More than anything, though, the song taps into Farrar’s reverence for the past, and maybe offers just a hint of his yearning to have been witness to such colorful history. Louis neighborhoods and half-forgotten bluesmen, most of whom had local connections. One of Farrar’s most intricately written songs, this tune from solo project Sebastopol is a compendium of bygone St. Notable Nugget: The song is possibly the shortest Farrar track of all time, coming in at just one minute and 42 seconds (it gets a slightly longer arrangement on live album Stone, Steel & Bright Lights, clocking in at 2:30). The title of the collection refers to late-night musical sessions in which Farrar would experiment with alternate tunings and oddball song ideas, and the song became a staple opener for Farrar’s solo sets in the last few years. Louis.īest lyric: “Wrecking-ball operator/twenty years, pulling the lever/these windows, shield the cold/from the weather and my soul.”Įasily worthy of a folk Nuggets album someday, this song originally appeared on Thirdshiftgrottoslack, an EP of songs that didn’t make it onto Sebastopol. Low-fi heaven! Bob Ludwig got it sounding good enough to put on the record.”Ī mournful elegy closing Son Volt’s 1997 sophomore album Straightaways, “Way Down Watson” is one of Farrar’s most poignant folk songs about the destruction of the past-in this case, the 1995 demolition of the historic Coral Court Motel on Watson Road in St. “I recorded it with a cassette 4-track, an old 3M reel-to-reel (for the loop) and a cassette Walkman with a vari-speed control. ‘Favorite’ to me is synonymous with ‘instrumental,’ because writing the lyrics is the hard part,” Farrar says. In fact, Farrar’s favorite is one that didn’t make our list: “Chanty,” from Son Volt’s Wide Swing Tremolo. We asked the man himself to weigh in on our top five read his exclusive comments in American Songwriter (the one with Neil Young on the cover). In his teens and early 20s, Farrar found his muse in the noise and fury of punk rock, while also demonstrating a gift for turning downbeat themes into vivid songs (“Whiskey Bottle,” about hard-living on the road or “Chickamauga,” about the impending dissolution of Uncle Tupelo).Īs an older, more mature writer, he’s tackled broader social and political themes that (often obliquely) reflect his own changing worldview, informed in part by parenthood and a deepening appreciation for certain cultural touchstones of American music and literature, from Woody Guthrie to Jack Kerouac.īelow, you’ll find a list of the top 20 songs Farrar has written, for Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt and as a solo artist.

Not that his canon is devoid of happiness, but most of his best work is his most melancholy. Farrar’s mastercraft comes in the form of stream-of-consciousness lyrics, dark melodies and a trained eye for the downtrodden, world- and road-weary-and the feelings and emotions these subjects evoke. Farrar bears little resemblance to the hitmakers of our time, the Linda Perrys and Max Martins lurking behind the bubblegum ditties littering the pop charts.

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