Uncle Tupelo

With their sophomore LP, Uncle Tupelo uses the basic formulas of No Depression, but turns the volume up considerably, giving tunes like "Gun" and "Nothing" a raging earnestness. Interestingly, the band's lead vocal duties are distributed with increasing evenness between Jay Farrar, who dominates their first record, and Jeff Tweedy, who would go on to lead the much more popular Wilco. The best songs here are still Farrar's, though, including "Punch Drunk" and the lovely acoustic number "Still Be Around."

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 >