Uncle Tupelo

Few single records can claim responsibility for an entire musical movement, but this 1990 merger of hill country and punk rock kick-started a genre (and, later, a magazine about the genre) that borrowed the record's name. The distorted urgency of tunes like "Graveyard Shift" and "Factory Belt" and spirited update on hill songs like the title track drew blueprints for the next decade of alt country. It's no overstatement to consider this essential for deep listeners of American rock, punk and country.

Uncle Tupelo crawled out of the factory town of Belleville, Illinois, in 1987 with what
turned out to be one of the most durable ideas of the modern-rock era: using loud, fervent
guitars to support the churchgoing earnestness of hillbilly songs. By the time the band
dissolved, four studio albums later, songwriters Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy -- who went on
to found Son Volt and Wilco, respectively -- had helped spark the thriving alt-co... More >