Customer Reviews

Anodyne

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

By now it should be apparent that, irrespective of genre, two brilliant songwriters can coexist within the same band for only so long. Such collaborations may last but a few months, as in the case of the early incarnation of Metallica that featured both James Hetfield and Dave Mustaine, or as long as several years in the cases of the dynamic duos that fronted the Beatles (ok, George Harrison made them a dynamic trio of songwriters) and Uncle Tupelo. Ultimately, however, a band with more than one ingenious songwriter is destined to fission.

Luckily, in the case of Uncle Tupelo, childhood friends Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy were able to work together long enough to produce four excellent studio albums, the last of which, Anodyne, represents their most remarkable artistic achievement as a songwriting team.

The proceedings start out well enough with the mournful "Slate" and hoedown worthy "Acuff-Rose". However, the meat of the album starts on the third track, "The Long Cut", which is the first in what seems like an endless stream of classics to come. "Give Back the Key to My Heart" manages to be sweet, funny, and heartbreaking all at once. As perhaps the finest and most rocking song UT ever recorded, "Chickamauga" features a several minute blistering guitar solo outro that soars to the rarified heights achieved before by only a handful of bands such as Pearl Jam on "Alive" and Pink Floyd on "Comfortably Numb". After the frenzied glory of "Chickamauga", the laid-back country pickin' on "New Madrid" comes almost as a relief. "We've Been Had" snags the riff from Springsteen's "Crush on You" and does great things with it. "Steal the Crumbs" is a wonderfully mellow closer.

It's a shame Farrar and Tweedy could no longer work together after Anodyne, yet you've got to admit they've both acquitted themselves quite well on their own since then. Maybe sometime I'll take the time to compare their post-Tupelo output and throw my two cents in on the Farrar vs. Tweedy debate. For now, I suggest that you pull out your copy of Anodyne, grab a bottle of IBC, and enjoy.

I rarely give 5 star reviews, if only to make a point that few CDs actually deserve them. But this disc is truly special. While all of Uncle Tupelo's previous works hinted at their amazing potential, it all came together here. Whether you're a fan of country, rock, or alternative, you will love this album. They incorporate country, folk, blues, rock, punk into one of the great demonstrations of purely American music. If this sounds like a die hard UT fan going overboard, that's understandable, but I really believe this is a phenomenal CD, worthy of anyone's attention. Its amazing to think of what they could have accomplished if they hadn't broken up after this album. Maybe they knew it would be nearly impossible to match.

Upon the first listen to Uncle Tupelo's 1993 album Anodyne, the aura of something coming to an end is clear. Nearly every one of Farrar's songs contain lyrics hinting at separation: "The time is right for getting out while we still can", "No sign of reconciliation", "We can't seem to find common ground", and finally "No more will I see you". In hindsight, we should have seen Uncle Tupelo's demise as clearly as we should have seen Kurt Cobain's suicide. But we didn't, and that only makes the music more haunting and timeless.

As splintered as some Tupelo albums are, it is ironic that Anodyne is cohesive and flows effortlessly from track to track. Jeff Tweedy clearly caught up with Jay Farrar on the album, his songs emitting the buoyant and upbeat antidote to Farrar's mournful ballads. The frenetic energy of the band's early days is gone, replaced with a more balanced and subdued mix of rock and country. The band's sophistication has always stood in contrast with its age, but while listening it's hard to imagine that this band has only been releasing albums for 4 years. While Anodyne is UT's first release on a major label, it retains the raw edge of earlier releases; this can be attributed to the band's standards of getting the songs down live in one take. Mistakes are clearly audible and some parts could be tightened, but the deficiencies actually add to the quality and credibility of the album creating an achingly vulnerable atmosphere. Remarkably, the orchestration is stunning in most places and you have to remind yourself that there were no overdubs or studio trickery in place. Mandolins and guitars drive in sync, lap steel floats over the mix, bass hooks abound creating a sound that at the same time soothes and rubs against the grain of your eardrums. The songs are the best the band ever created as a unit and the lyrics, Farrar's especially, reveal the anatomy of the band's breakdown in a poignant manner. By the time the chorus of the closing track "Steal the Crumbs" comes around anyone who cares about the band's music will feel saddened and deprived of what this band could have become.

The bottom line: Anodyne is essential for any fan of rock music. Pick it up, it's impossible to be let down.

Depending on what dictionary you use, you'll find different defintions for the word "anodyne."
One says "anodyne" means "a cure for all depression."
Another says it means "soothing, calming."
Another: "a medicine that relieves pain."
It can be a noun, or an adjective.
In all these definitions, it fits this album perfectly. This, Uncle Tupelo's last (and best) album together, "Anodyne," will cure those depressed by a lack of beautiful music, it will soothe and calm those who have wasted their time on music less melodious and less mournful, and will relieve the pain of those who have their hearts broken with no one to tell their sorrows to.
This album is full of songs of struggle and longing, hopefulness and the feeling of being betrayed, acceptance and resignation. The cover version of "Give Back the Key to My Heart" will lodge itself in your brain for weeks. "New Madrid" with its banjoish, country road, "Driving on 9" type of feel will make you rush to your car keys and out the door, slamming the screen door behind you. And "No Sense In Lovin'," with its lilting steel guitar and walloping lyrics will reaffirm your suspicion that Jeff Tweedy is among the greatest songwriters of all time. (It has to be Uncle Tupelo's best song.)
"There's no sense in lovin'
Anyone
Who hates themself."
This is the last album of a great band full of great musicians. Listening to it, one is filled simultaneously with the sadness that this band may never play together again and a joyful knowledge of the great music that both of this band's main songwriters (Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and Jay Farrar of Son Volt) would go on to write on their own.
I love this album. (My daughter's NAME is Anodyne. Seriously.) You can listen to this album when you're happy, or when you're sad, and they'll be something in it for you no matter what.
It's alt.country at its best.
It's MUSIC at its best.
It's GREAT.

Anodyne was Uncle Tupelo's major label debut and also their swan song. After going the acoustic route on their previous album, the band revs back up into the country-rock arena. They shoot for the top and don't miss. The album is a perfect blend of rock songs "Chickamauga" and "The Long Cut", folk like the amazing "New Madrid" and "Steal The Crumbs", straight country in "Acuff-Rose" and the marrying of their sounds on the brilliant remake of Doug Sahm's "Give Back The Keys To My Heart" (Mr. Sahm provides guest vocals on the track). The band unfortunately splintered apart after the album with Jay Farrar forming Sun Volt and Jeff Tweedy forming the more successful and critically lauded Wilco. But as their parting gift, they served up one of the best albums of the 90's.

Anodyne is the final work by Uncle Tupelo, a band that defined 'rural contemporary' American music in the nineties. Their early works influenced Nirvana a great deal, but the band themselves never took off that far. To this day, no Uncle Tupelo release has gone gold or platinum, or charted in the top 40. We can only hope that the rereleases will change this, as this band revamped the American musical sound with four outstanding works.

Anodyne is the last, and arguably the best Tupelo record, but definitely essential. At this point, tensions had climaxed between Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar, and much like Wilco's tense situation in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the listeners are the better for it. Gone is the collaboration found on No Depression and March 16-20, 1992; but remaining are the contrasting visions of what the 'rural contemporary' sound should be. Jeff Tweedy's vision is more experimental and poppy, similar to Paul McCartney's place at the ending of The Beatles. To produce this end, he created more bouncy but still thought-provoking works like "Acuff-Rose", "The Long Cut", and "No Sense In Lovin'".

Jay Farrar's vision for the future of country was more rooted in traditional music and straight country; for instance, the title track's ultra-slow twang sound, still fused with the quick pace jumps, creates a bipolar rock that I think will turn out very profound. He even does a cover of Doug Sahm (sp?)'s "Give Back The Key To My Heart" to show his solidarity down the traditional route. Numbers like "Slate" also illustrate his tiredness and his vision of 'reinvented basics'.

Overall, the album presents the best yet case for a reinvented country sound, and the only albums to respond to Anodyne's call were created by Tupelo's splinter bands: Son Volt's *Trace* and Wilco's *Being There* especially.

Hopefully, this album will gain stature as a country classic, but only if people like you buy it and spread the word.

Uncle Tupelo was a thing of beauty. They had the spook, they had the root, they had the rhythm and the mystery, and the train they drove chugged through the heartland. It had been 15 or so years since The Band called it quits, and in that yawning cavern of real music no one had stepped in to fill so aching a need. Not until UT, and though they would also soon split and come up with 2 or 3 really great spin offs, here before the big bang, it was an incredible universe.
The disc opens with "Slate" and winds up with "Susie Q", and for the 70 minute ride in between, you're gonna hear nothing but terrific music. The Band tapped into what affected people. UT hit that same raw nerve. This is real honest stuff, with compelling, memorable melodies. Homage is paid to Acuff-Rose, as well as to the best elements of Neil Young (before he lost his direction), Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Eric Anderson. The title track is extraordinary. "Give Me Back the Keys to My Heart" is possibly the best song written in the 90's.
Just as The Band appeared as completely against the trend of their times, UT also appeared as completely out of step with what was going on in music as it is possible to be. What they left behind, and this collection is their Supernova, is timeless.
Once again, Rhino has done American roots music an extraordinary service in releasing this remarkable disc.

I am one of those people who can listen to Metallica, Merle Haggard, Jackson Browne, and The Clash and love it all equally. I can listen to Rancid and Offspring and Buck Owens as much as I do The Who and Lyle Lovett. So, when people tell you this CD is a mix of rock, country, blues, folk and punk, they hit it right on the head.

It takes real talent to move across so many genres in one Cd and have it all come up working. Uncle Tupelo does it here, and it's no understatement to say this is a work of art. Plaintive, reflective, rocking, strolling, rejoicing, mourning, it's all here and it is sure to have an emotional effect on you.

Having said all of that, I think one more thing needs to be said here. Putting all the ascerbic comments aside, and all the analytical "what if they had stayed together" stuff, the fact is that this is just a GREAT album.

I think that's really all that it comes down to. No matter what kind of music you really like, this one is worth owning simply because it's a GREAT album.

It makes you feel things, it sets out a mood that just washes over you and sweeps you in, it makes you happy, it makes you sad, it makes you want to get in your pickup truck at sunset and drive as fast as you can with the windows down and reach for the western skyline and all that the world has to promise. For a CD to be that deep and yet that "primal" at the same time is a testimate to the body of true talent that went into this masterpiece.

Best album ever? Probably not. Best of 90's? Maybe. Best Uncle Tupelo album? Most definitely. And that's saying a lot. Few bands have ever had the vibrancy and unflagging level of quality songs that Jay, Jeff, and the rest gave us. And this was where they pulled out all the stops. The rugged, jarring mix of country and punk of their first two albums. The folk inflected,campfire protest songs of their third. All these finally coalesced into perfection on Anondyne. Whereas before it often seemed that Jay's songs were the more serious, higher quality numbers, Jeff finally sounded like his equal. The Mccartney to Jay's Lennon. Songs like "The Long Cut" and "New Madrid" more than anything show Jeff Tweedy's emergence as an assured songwriter and stronger singer than ever before. As for Jay, it's amazing that someone who was already so strong a presence artistically could improve. But thats exactly what he did. "Slate", "Chickamauga", and "Steal the Crumbs" exceeded anything he had done before. This is not to downplay the partnership between Jay and Jeff. After all, all songs are listed as by Farrar-Tweedy. And more than likely these songs would have sounded very different if these two great talents weren't in a band together. But you can't help but listen to these songs and hear the sound of two doors opening from the same room. The future in the form of Son Volt (Jay's band) and Wilco (Jeff's band) was birthed on this album. There is a sense of finality to this album. Whether this is intentional or merely listening with hindsight (the band broke up the next year), this is not a sad record. Yes, there is yearning and loss, melancholy and anger. But more than anything there is the joy of true, real music. Best album ever? Only when your listening to it.

A lot's been said about Uncle Tupelo's influence on the country-rock, or "No Depression," movement. The band's swan song, "Anodyne," illustrates why they deserve the hype. It's by far the band's most accomplished and consistent album, despite the fact they were on the verge of breaking up. You'd be hard-pressed to find a band that could handle traditional country ("Acuff-Rose," "Slate," the title track) to blistering rock ("Chickamauga," "The Long Cut"). It's a masterwork by one of the 1990s' most important bands.