STEREO-TYPE
RECORD REVIEW
July 2003
By Andria Lisle

From its first note, Terroir Blues unfolds like an elegantly wrought treasure map, all faded calligraphy on bare cowhide, rolled up and hidden for hundreds of years. Put the album on once or twice, and chances are that you'll nod your head and tap your feet to tracks like "Hanging On to You" without fully deciphering the story Farrar has begun to tell.

Listen carefully, and you'll being to collect the clues. "You're gonna find pain/ When you're out on the road," Farrar broods convincingly some 25 minutes into the disc. "Loneliness will come calling/ Don't let the falling rain get in your mind/ Intensify the world/ Revolutions from within/ Take everything in stride/ The story-ghosts you share/ When your're out on the road."

Yet Farrar prefers to travel mental- rather than physical- distances on this album, crossing the centuries of his St. Louis hometown to find his own ghosts. The hauntingly sparse "Cahokian" reveals ancient history, covering the Indian civilization that ruled the upper Mississippi valley more than a thousand years ago, while the two versions of "Heart On the Ground" (stripped-down country and full-blown rock n' roll) depict betrayal, Missouri-style.

The album's underlying voice is Jay's father, Jim "Pops" Farrar, an itinerant musician and former Merchant Marine who died in the summer of 2002. "Hard Is the Fall" and "Dent County" are both stories from the elder Farrar's life, while the western weeper "California" shows that the burden was lifted from father to son.

Joined by a handpicked group of alt-country heroes (including the Blood Oranges' Mark Spencer on piano and lap steel and Superchunk's Jon Wurster on drums), Farrar somberly entwines the past and present on these 23 tracks. More articulate and introspective than any other alt-country release this year, Terroir Blues is an American Masterpiece.