Son Volt - The Search

Earnest, plainspoken and single-minded, Jay Farrar has amassed a sizable and distinctive body of work since coming on the radar with Uncle Tupelo in 1987. The Search, the fifth album by the St. Louis-based artist under the Son Volt nameplate, contrasts 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 Farrar sings ruefully on The Picture.

By turns melancholy and exhilarating, the album further cements Farrar's status as one of rock's most eloquent chroniclers of contemporary existence.

• Slow Hearse
• The Picture
• Action
• Underground Dream
• Circadian Rhythm
• Beacon Soul
• The Search
• Adrenaline And Heresy
• Satellite
• Automatic Society
• Methamphetamine
• L Train
• Highways And Cigarettes
• Phosphate Skin