Son Volt

Notes Of Blue

Four years on from Honky Tonk, 10 new songs

The sleeve shows Jay Farrar alone with his guitar, washed in blue. Most of the songs are in Skip James or Mississippi Fred McDowell tunings. Lines keep popping up in the lyrics about his time not being long, not feeling at home in this world any more and needing to ease his troubled mind. Yes, a blues album. It’s not the first time a Son Volt album has focused on one particular root of Americana; last time it was juke-joint country and roadhouse ballads. But actually he’s not quite so deferential here – sometimes it’s more about a blues feeling, encompassing high-lonesome (The Storm), electric countryblues rock (Midnight), twochord garage rock (Sinking Down) and, at its most beautiful on the opening track Promise The World, the kind of heartbreaking, steel-laden folk-country that Hank Williams called “the white man’s blues”.