Lambchop: "Gone Tomorrow"

I could post just about any track off Lambchop's new album Mr. M and not go wrong (although it does taper off in quality a bit toward the end), but "Gone Tomorrow" is probably the best and - hey - it actually has a wrestling-themed video. Mr. M eschews a lot of the kitschy lounge sound that Lambchop have become known for, but there is plenty of Wilco-esque Americana jazziness in the late instrumental breakdown.

1990: "Shady Grove", Blood Oranges

Another early entry in the alt-country sweepstakes, Blood Oranges were a band that had their hearts in the right places but were maybe a bit too polished and loyal to the dying roots rock scene. Never remotely popular in their time, even today the Oranges are rarely mentioned outside of Americana crate digging circles. Still a fine band in their own right, but if you've already done Uncle Tupelo to death and want more stripped down alt country of similar authenticity, you're better off ditching the slick veneers of the Silos and Blood Oranges and going with either the Jayhawks or Freakwater, neither of which had albums out in 1990 to fit in with present coverage. They both beat Uncle Tupelo to vinyl, though.

1990: "Commodore Peter", The Silos

While No Depression is generally regarded as the first real Americana album, there were a number of earlier progenitors that would retroactively need to be slapped with the alt-country tag after the fact, one of the more notable being the Silos. However, you can listen to a lot of these early Americana acts like the Silos and hear instantly why Uncle Tupelo are considered so trail blazing while few of their contemporaries are. It's not that the Silos or groups like them are necessarily generic or uninspired, it's that you can still distinctly hear the relics of the hugely popular roots rock movement that peaked and crashed only a few years prior in the mid-80s, usually to the point that the roots rock elements are predominant, and any stab at the folk or country blues traditions is almost incidental.

So the genius of Uncle Tupelo had as much to do with taking 40 grit sandpaper to the era's polished production values as it did their choice in material. It's well within imaginable realms to ponder Jeff Tweedy singing a song like "Commodore Peter", but what separates his band from one like the Silos is that the latter still hew closely to the rootsy jangle pop sound of the 80s, while you couldn't really see Uncle Tupelo fucking with arpeggiated chords. To Tweedy and Jay Farrar the Silos probably sounded a lot closer to REM than anything Uncle Tupelo was going for.

ALBUM SPOTLIGHT: "No Depression", Uncle Tupelo

The importance of Uncle Tupelo is impossible to overstate. Did they invent what they became known for? Oh, sweet love of God, no. The mixing of punk rock swagger with traditional country and rural folk elements had become common enough (particularly in the LA music scene) that the term "cowpunk" was already common parlance by the mid-80s. And, especially early on, there were definitely cornerstones of the Tupelo sound that owed nearly everything to the by then stale cowpunk scene:

"Before I Break"



But in our haste to reach for antecedents let's not undersell the more exploratory side of the band's legacy, which came when they turned the volume down and got introspective. At that point they tended to jettison punk rock altogether and became something more akin to Neil Young acolytes:

"Life Worth Livin'"



Eventually Uncle Tupelo - Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy and drummer Mike Heidorn - would outgrow these formative influences and forge something unique, something elemental, out of that decidedly un-chic foundation, but when No Depression was unleashed on the public in 1990 the trio was still in full on deconstruction mode, stripping cowpunk and Neil Young's patented proto-grunge down to the frame, dowsing it with half full cans of mismatched primer and taking it for a fast ride down the country lanes of Southwestern Illinois. It was that alchemy which would prove prophetic and vastly influential.

"Whiskey Bottle"



Lastly, it would be remiss not to mention that the title cut from Uncle Tupelo's debut, itself a cover of an old Carter Family song, became the moniker of the magazine No Depression, a bi-monthly publication first appearing in 1995 that arguably did more to define the nascent musical genre "Americana", as well as consolidate it into an actual "scene", than any other band or entity on the planet.

"No Depression"