It’s not always easy being Jay Farrar. He may not be as hot a commodity as other alt-country pin-ups (Ryan Adams, Jeff Tweedy), but he continues to stretch the genre he helped define with Uncle Tupelo and made viable with Son Volt. Not to mention that this Belleville, Ill. native calls South St. Louis his home, adding to this city’s flagging indie cred.
With ThirdShiftGrottoSlack, an EP’s worth of leftovers and one new mix from last year’s Sebastopol album, Farrar shows his willingness to expand his style and sound. Even his guest musicians represent some of the most adventurous and consistent bands around, as members of Superchunk, the Flaming Lips and Centro-Matic help flesh out Farrar’s already full-bodied tunes.
The EP opens with “Greenwich Time,” an abbreviated travel diary that, at 1:41, may be Farrar’s shortest song on record. Even with the truncated length he manages to sneak in some of his best, most disenchanted lines, like “Bare the glare of Cold War trash / Put it on the table.”
Producer Tom Rothrock was tapped for the Memphis Mix of Sebastopol’s “Damn Shame,” pushing the drums up front and adding some nonsense vocals to the track. Rothrock has done some fine work with Elliott Smith and Beck and does a nice job funkifying Farrar’s bluesy delivery.
The highlight of this five-song disc falls squarely in the middle with “Station to Station,” another song about travel and the passage of time in which Farrar gets to show off his piano skills. Note that this is not a cover of David Bowie’s “Station to Station,” though we won’t hold that against Farrar.
The only real dud is “Kind of Madness,” a sort of News of the Weird round-up. Even Matt Pence can’t drum this one out of the doldrums. “Dues” fares better, with a reed organ adding some accordion-esque ambience to a more poetic take on Springsteenian themes.
But really, how much can you say about a 14-minute EP? Suffice to say that ThirdShiftGrottoSlack continues Farrar’s evolution as both a singer and a songwriter: his lyrics are more introspective, some of his vitriol has been quelled and his Midwestern tenor has aged sweetly.
