SON VOLT + Peter Bruntnell [night 1]

Thu 4th Oct 2007

The Luminaire presents
Our first Annual American Music Festival;
a series of shows from 1-14 October

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SON VOLT [night 1 of 2]
+ Peter Bruntnell

Doors 7.30
£18 via WeGotTickets | £20 door

"Lead singer Jay Farrar departs from his alt-country roots with this riveting album, featuring Memphis-style horns, piano and strings." [Newsweek]

"A turbulent record, both topically and lyrically. Farrar touches upon foreign, domestic and societal issues.set to melodies and rhythms that are alternately savaging and soothing." [No Depression]

Jay Farrar has amassed a sizable and distinctive body of work since coming on the radar with Uncle Tupelo in 1989. The Search, the fifth album by the St. Louis-based artist under the Son Volt nameplate, takes Farrar's signature juxtapositions of the arcane and the modern to provocative extremes, contrasting the blue highways of a disappearing cultural landscape with a perilous world in which the center no longer holds - a world of information overload, of clueless leaders carrying out sinister agendas, of "Hurricanes in December - earthquakes in the heartland/Bad air index on a flashing warning sign," as the artist sings ruefully on 'The Picture'.

"Jay Farrar seems energized: more driven than he's been in years. Simple but effective sonic details - a chirpy horn arrangement, a reverse-looped guitar part - prevent 'The Search' from feeling either preachy or repetitive. In Mr. Farrar's world there's always a sun-streaked horizon ahead." [New York Times]

"The sonic canvas is much broader, with echoes of R.E.M., Derek and the Dominos, Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris and classic albums. Farrar dresses up his songs with horns, car-alarm guitar, warbling piano, pedal steel and lovely keyboard washes. [Associated Press]

Peter Bruntnell supports.

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