Uncle Tupelo - No Depression

The album that named a movement (and a magazine), No Depression rocks and twangs in just about equal measure, though the rock side wins out most of the time. Even when a song downshifts from full-on punk to banjo- and mandolin-graced interludes, it usually shifts back again, seemingly even louder and angrier than before. Beyond the influential sound, though, are some great songs--whether they're raging originals like "Graveyard Shift," where the job's literally a killer; an earnest, acoustic cover of the Carter Family's title track; or a decidedly desperate portrait of Leadbelly's "John Hardy." --David Cantwell Amazon.com essential recording

An attempt to sell folky sounds to teenage grungers.

There's plenty of great alt country/ folk bands out there but this lot are very overrated. This may well be the only way to get young metal/ grunge heads to listen to any sort of countrified sound but I'm not buying into it. Jay Farrar has a great voice and is capable of pretty emotional stuff, like the second track 'That Year'. The majority of this LP is drab country grunge though. July 25, 2008

The beginning of Alt. Country

This album should be in anyone who loves alt country because it it is true alt country. Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy are great songwriters inside and outside Uncle Tupelo. Gatherered 11 originals and two covers, This is a modern rock classic that should be loved by all who like Son Volt or Wilco because those bands came out of this band. Favorites include Graveyard Shift, Before I Break, No Depression, Whiskey Bottle, Life Worth Livin', So Called Friend, Screen Door, and John Hardy. Highly Highly Recommended. August 5, 2005

The seminal Alt/Country Album

The only drawback about this album is its sound quality. Apart from that, this album should be listed as the definition of the Alt/Country genre. This album, which is impossible to tire of, addresses traditional country themes (alcholism, labor, loneliness, waste, and inequality) while deceiving the listener. Graceyard Shift rips right off from the start reminding us of the Replacements as its hard chords seem more rockish, while country-ish twangs pervade the background. And Tweedy sings of man's great lament in the industrialzed society, loss of self, dispersed power, Foucault's panopticism.
The irony of Uncle Tupelo is that the music while implicatory in nature also sooths and reminds us of something better. The pastoral is the loss ideal, mans self is lamented in hard-driven rock n'roll and we are all mourning the loss.
There is a maturity here that is incomparable in the alternative scene. Rather than letting hypocrisy, exploitation and capitalism make them morphous blobs of lamenting self-effacing crooners, they dare to sing about it. Adopting a tradition laid down by Guthrie, they employ their own passions (punk, hard rock, country) and mesmerize us musically while reminding us that there is something more important than the song.
Cumulatively, this album is rock's great treatise against capitalism, idustrialism, and modernization. We meet characters who no longer fit and destroy themselves with liquor and debauchery. But, the morality in the music extends further than alcoholism and morbid romanticization of man isolated and forgotten. It is a smart and convincing treatise that is Tupelo's best and an absolute classic... March 18, 2003

Meanwhile, just outside St. Louis

Back in 1990, I thought I was pretty `with it'. In addition to indulging my omnipresent metal fetish, I was listening to Mother Love Bone, Green River, Soundgarden and whatever else I could get my hands on coming out of Seattle. Yeah, I was big man on campus at William and Mary - at least in my own mind. When the Seattle scene exploded I got the kudos owed to someone who was hip to the scene before it went nationwide. Pretty cool, huh?

Perhaps not as cool as I thought. By the mid-90s, Kurdt Cobain's suicide had pretty much signaled the end of the grunge movement and made it possible for rap metal lunkheads like Limp Bizkit and a second generation of grunge imitators like Creed to take over. Suddenly, a genre that had seemed so vital and revolutionary became dated. Old Soundgarden records no longer sounded as good and new ones like Down on the Upside just sounded horribly anachronistic.

The Seattle grunge scene was great while it lasted and we may never see another revolution in popular music quite like it. However, maybe if I'd been paying a little closer attention to a musical scene developing in America's heartland at the same time grunge was developing in Seattle, I'd have caught on to a second musical revolution during that era occurring in a genre that would prove to have more staying power than grunge. I'm talking about alt-country, aka "the movement".

The band credited with jumpstarting "the movement" was Uncle Tupelo which featured two brilliant songwriters, Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy, who were heavily influenced by both traditional country and punk rock. What Lennon and McCartney were to classic rock, Farrar and Tweedy were to alt-country.

If you can actually get your hands on Uncle Tupelo's hard-to-find debut, No Depression, it won't be long before you put an end to your habit of telling new acquaintances, "I listen to all kinds of music, except country". The opening track, "Graveyard Shift", grabs your attention immediately with its breakneck riffs and aggressive vocals - it's heavy enough to practically qualify as country-metal. The title track reveals a totally different side of UT as they cover the country traditional "No Depression" with such honesty and skill that it would later be adopted as the name of alt-country's biggest magazine. "Whiskey Bottle" is a favorite of many a UT fan and it is easy to see why. On the song, Farrar's voice exudes such raw desperation you start to genuinely worry for the guy. Fortunately, the spirits of the whole band seem to pick up during the country raveup, "Screen Door", an ode to sitting out on the porch playing music with friends.

The seminal nature of No Depression makes it hard to rate it as anything but 5 stars, though the production quality is some of the worst I've heard since on Metallica's ...And Justice for All. Fortunately, Farrar and Tweedy are said to be remastering the album and a more widely available reissue will probably be available some time in the next year or so. It's your call whether you want to pay the exorbitant sums dealers are charging for No Depression these days or wait for the better sounding and cheaper reissue to appear. If you make the latter choice, I strongly recommend you pick up the excellent UT Anthology 89/93 to tide you over until you can procure a copy of No Depression.

Trust me, if you overlooked "the movement" when it was developing like I did, there's still plenty of time to catch up. A little remedial work on Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Son Volt, Whiskeytown, the Old 97s, the Bottle Rockets, and the Drive-By Truckers and you'll have at least an elementary education in the ways of "the movement". December 14, 2002

Not as good as Still Feel Gone, but still good...

After reading a few of the reviews written about this album, I'm afraid that some people may be a bit disappointed by their whole Uncle Tupelo experience. I don't want to be misunderstood because I do feel that this is a good CD and my all time favorite Uncle Tupelo track is 'Life Worth Living', but this CD also lacks the overall consistency displayed on 'Still Feel Gone', and there are times when I want to forward through parts of this disc to get to the good songs, like 'Whiskey Bottle', 'Graveyard Shift', or 'Life Worth Living'. If this were the first Uncle Tupelo album that I'd bought, I believe that I'd have purchased another, but I'd have done so with the understanding that they're a good band and not the great band that I've read so much about. If you really want the great band that you're reading about, buy 'Still Feel Gone' because that's the album that almost lives up to this band's monster billing. Actually, all of this is pretty moot anyways because as of right now you can't purchase either album here. If you really like alt-country and you want to check out a CD that you can actually purchase, go to a band called '16 Horsepower' and listen to the audio clips of 'Secret South', 'Low Estate', or 'Sackcloth n Ashes'. '16 Horsepower' is light years better than 'Uncle Tupelo', and I promise that this is a decision that you'll love yourself for, for the rest of the day. November 23, 2001

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