Take the Rural Route

In 1954, Russell Lynes, writing for Harper's,
lamented that the age of prosperity could not do for the arts what the Great Depression had. Depressions, notwithstanding their evils, create community and a climate "more interesting, more lively, more thoughtful, and even, in a wry sort of way, more fun."

Arguably, such qualifiers would describe little on the contemporary popular musical landscape. The narcissism of recent decades has created a depression of a different sort, not so much external but inside the empty halls of the contemporary American soul. On the musical scene, punk, gangsta rap, and grunge have done well to create a platform for existential angst, but with little attempt to nourish or deliver an emotional range any deeper than rage. While the Depression's economic destitution yielded a sense of community and possibility for hope, our prosperity today has resulted in violence and despair.

Insofar as twentysomethings live in an era of social decay- scarce employment, drugs, violence-a handful of new bands have responded to this emerging depression in ways unlike their peers. Although they can be found in the pop aisle of a record store, the roots of the Bottlerockets, the Jayhawks, and Uncle Tupelo lie in country music. In addition, using the best elements of some mainstream styles, each band slowly pieces together their own narrative on the American landscape. Together they've created a musical community of their own, touring together and playing on each other's albums, and shying away from a consumerist impulse.

Geography plays an important role, too. The Bottlerockets are Rust Belt borne-a reality that their amplifiers loudly manifest. Rock music has long eulogized, sometimes romanticized, the blue-collar life. But rarely has a band from an insider's perspective simultaneously praised and criticized, none-too-lightly, Midwestern culture. Frontman Brian Henneman is a redneck and proud of it. At times he is clownish, other times scornful of political correctness. But his ball-capped, bearded identity is never merely a persona.

Hardcore rockabilly aptly describes many of the songs on the Bottlerockets' two albums. Rural themes, long found solely in the realm of country music, are the staple. Amidst the more boyish themes, however, there's "Wave That Flag," in which Henneman chides his unreflective peers who drive pick-ups brandishing the Confederate flag; a satirical treatment of a young trooper on "Radar Gun"; the curses of a rural economic slump in "Kerosene" and "Welfare Music." These last two songs and others like it are Henneman's gift, for the stories in the songs speak with a subtle strength where a political statement would only suffocate the point. He sings what he knows about, a realism that is more than enough to cut through Nashville sentimentality.

SEVERAL DECIBELS DOWN from the Bottlerockets, and several hundred miles up the Mississippi, are the Jayhawks. Though recently gaining a wider listening audience with their latest release, Tomorrow the Green Grass
, their style has crispened and remained uncompromised. And, though from Minneapolis, the Southern and'70s influences are strong. As musical descendants of Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers, every song, almost without exception, has an even-tempered soulful quality and is moderately paced. While escaping predictability, there's a familiarity to the music because it is so inviting.

The lyrical content seems consciously sketchy. These songs speak of the daily grind and the need for something more: entreaties for fidelity in relationships on "Pray for Me" and for comforting the suffering on "Anne Jane." Most songs are written by the two singer-guitarists, Mark Olson and Gary Louris, whose voices sound nearly indistinguishable. The band is rounded out by bassist Marc Perlman and keyboard player Karen Grotberg.

South on the Mississippi and just across the river from the Bottlerockets, in Bellesville, Illinois, Uncle Tupelo could be found-until recently. Main members Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy have bitterly parted company, but their music speaks volumes of the possibilities in country and
alternative music.

In a musical era marked by precision and overproduction, Uncle Tupelo resisted technology's sweet poison and recorded all of their albums live with no overdubs. This self-limiting style, known as "low-fi," which only independent labels have hitherto released, shows that when the studio sheen is eliminated, a rich vulnerability and sense of immediacy are preserved and shine brighter. A sublime balance of crunching guitar and pedal steel creates the paradoxical presence of aggression and intimacy.

Alcohol is one of UT's more common themes, especially on their first two albums. Farrar's serious tone, which neither glorifies it nor delivers a moral platitude, makes one wonder if alcohol is used metaphorically as anything that tempts, mesmerizes, but finally proves disastrous, providing only temporary relief from finding "a way out" of depressing circumstances.

The possibility that God may be the answer in the end is not left out: "Whiskey bottle over Jesus; not forever, just for now." While recognizing the precariousness of his own situation, Farrar's energies are in pursuit of more than the world has to offer, including

both earthly delights and organized religion. His and Tweedy's songs exegete life's experiences and the mystery thereof, diagnosing the condition but not pushing a remedy.

Their most poignant recording, the acoustic March 16-20, 1992,
includes coal miner, Holiness, and traditional Depression-era songs. The presence of both the forlornly alcoholic "Moonshiner" and the premillennialist "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down" is an exercise in probing the deep recesses of the human condition to a degree that few artists have risked. Their earthy and inclusive quality is the very thing that makes them worthy of our trust in penetrating the human heart and shedding light on its vacancy, and the aching struggle to maintain hope. This broken reality, which stands in the way of our understanding and search for wholeness, Uncle Tupelo fearlessly and solemnly names: "Ain't it hard when the spirit doesn't catch you; gravity's the winner and it weighs you down, it weighs you down."

Departing Tupelo, Jeff Tweedy has formed Wilco, which employs country elements in a slightly more trendy direction. The missing eccentrism and haunting quality of Farrar are evident. Farrar's new band, Son Volt, includes Tupelo's original drummer, Mike Heidorn.

The rural feedback of bands like these would be popular music's salvation if it weren't for the basic elements which defeat that possibility. Uncle Tupelo's low-fi style and the Bottlerockets' lower-middle-class wit may (happily) keep fans to a minimum. More important, all three bands resist the anti-hero pedestal that has ironically become popularized.

Less and less common is the songwriter whose point of reference isn't the self-indulgent, angst-ridden youth culture whose reality is interpreted through the eyes of mass media, which in turn tends to induce the identity crisis that it finds so marketable. Our own narratives and communities are the first casualties of this perplexing mess. To this new Depression, the Bottlerockets, the Jayhawks, and Uncle Tupelo provide a true and fertile alternative.

JEREMY LLOYD, a former Sojourners intern, is a faculty assistant with the Oregon Extension in Ashland, Oregon.