Prodigal Son

Seven years is a long time between albums, long enough for a band to all but vanish from the cultural radar. Such is the case with Son Volt. The group—which was alt-country before it was cool and helped to establish the genre's brooding, twangy sensibility—evaporated after the release of 1998's Wide Swing Tremolo. Jay Farrar, the folk-steeped songwriter who founded the outfit after the demise of the much-admired Uncle Tupelo (which also spawned Wilco), had become a family man. He wanted to downsize, do the solo thing and rethink his way of making music. And, no doubt, escape anything vaguely labeled "alt-country."

"There was a different approach I wanted to try," says Farrar, as laconic in conversation as he is poetic on the lyric sheet, talking quietly over the phone from his home in St. Louis. "What interested me was working with different sonic textures, and I didn't want to impose that on Son Volt. It doesn't necessarily translate that well to a live context."

So Farrar took his spin, recording a variety of solo efforts, touring with the band Canyon and writing a score to the 2002 indie flick The Slaughter Rule. "I went at it with an anything-goes attitude," he recalls. "I wanted to try layering, working with electronic instruments in the studio. And then, live, the thing was about stripping down."

The changes did Farrar good—good enough that he decided it was time to bring Son Volt back. The band returns with Okemah and the Melody of Riot, which crackles and burns with an old-school fervor, fed by a true-to-its-title melodic richness that has the strummy flavor people loved in Life's Rich Pageant–era R.E.M. Okemah, for those unfamiliar, was the Oklahoma birthplace of Woody Guthrie, a place Farrar remembers from an old road trip. "Years ago I actually stopped off there with two of the guys from the Bottle Rockets," Farrar says. "There's a water tower that says home of woody guthrie, but his house was flattened. There was just rubble."

Son Volt 2.0 builds a sonic monument out of those ruins. Farrar embraces a widely sweeping view of Americana (in the old sense of the world, not the alt-country synonym). "Afterglow 61" evokes the mythic status of the blues highway, as guitars surge and slide with the bumptious energy of Crazy Horse. But the next tune, "Jet Pilot," paints a betrayal of American dreams, with unmistakable references to the White House, as Farrar sings in an ironic higher pitch: "Jet pilot got a passing grade / Made it to the world stage / A hemisphere away death is on display / The sins'd never wash away."

After all this time, Son Volt sounds completely revitalized. Hardly a tune concludes without the passionate flare of guitars spraying feedback, tangled in grungy harmonics. Funny thing, though—the only original member left is Farrar. Plans for a reunion of the circa-'98 ensemble fell apart just before sessions were to begin last year, so he put together a new band on the fly for a record that sounds thrillingly unmediated. "The main approach was to try to capture as much of the moment as possible, doing a lot of it live using a minimal amount of overdubs," Farrar says. "A lot of records that have stood up well for me used that approach, like classic Rolling Stones: Exile on Main Street; Beggars Banquet."

Much like the Stones' dueling Glimmer Twins—Mick Jagger and Keith Richards—Farrar and his former Uncle Tupelo bandmate Jeff Tweedy are perpetually linked among their fans. While Farrar honed his solo act, Tweedy's Wilco won breakthrough exposure with the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, which charted the troubled making of 2003's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Farrar doesn't have a whole lot to offer on the topic of Tweedy—good, bad or ugly. "We haven't spoken for years," he says. "Back in the late '90s we played a festival, and I think both he and I went up to each other's shows at certain times. But [we] drifted apart, like most people who went to high school together." He claims not to have seen Tweedy on celluloid. So what would a documentary camera have captured during the sessions for Okemah? Farrar has no drama-strewn reflections. He just seems happy to be flexing his rock chops again.

"You never know whether it's going to work or not," he says. "Sometimes when you are in a situation where you are pushed to the limit, you're forced to coalesce."

Okemah and the Melody of Riot is out Tuesday 12 on Sony Legacy.