Jayhawks - The Band That Lived Twice

Their book doesn't yet exist in the music section, but its absence is deafening. A scant couple of inches of empty shelf space that clashes with the many yards of cabinet space devoted to the stale cult of has-been popstars. Acid-colored spines dedicated to certain insipid one-hit wonders of the Nineties, with the titles of their lone hit single engraved on the covers like glittering sentences, teasers festooned over the brink of an oblivion that today looks more than fitting. Pitiful, one might say. The library won't acquire it until someone bothers to write it and get it published. Unlikely to happen now, with the spotlight so far from Minneapolis, even if the gentle breeze of a comeback might not be a bad incentive. More realistically, we'll have to wait for the Jayhawks' arc to finally come to an end — a prospect foretold countless times before and just as regularly disproved by this band of guitar-wielding illusionists. Mark Olson and Gary Louris, Dioscuri of the Americana rediscovery and sublime masters of suspense, eternal characters in search of an author with just the right backstory for the most gripping of feuilletons: a car accident that would make Bob Dylan jealous, the rollercoaster major-label deal signed moments before the band's breakup, and then that unexpected defection to make room for matters of the heart. Mark bowing out just as the first and only magazine covers were rolling in. Leaving the city behind to embrace the Mojave desert and devote himself to that singer-songwriter girlfriend, Victoria Williams, to whom he'd just dedicated a song and whom he would soon marry. His decision to stand by her and face the long shadow of multiple sclerosis together earned him the admiration of everyone who had loved the band. That affection snuffed out any bitterness before it could take hold, and whatever flare-up there was left no lasting scars. It did, however, leave the Jayhawks crippled and close to the end of the road, rudderless within the maze of tradition and seemingly no longer of use in that alt-country universe which they themselves, far more than the ever-celebrated Uncle Tupelo, had managed to make so wonderfully relevant during the stormy years of grunge. Less than five years after that revelation, though, a miracle takes place at the bottom of the well: an unexpected pop rebirth masterminded by Gary Louris.

It will only be the first of a long series.

The Everly Brothers are back

Minneapolis, winter 1985. Twenty-four-year-old Mark Olson is taking his first steps in one of the liveliest music scenes in the United States during Reagan's second term. In Prince's hometown, a couple of key bands of the growing hardcore revolution have just made their name, Husker Du and Replacements, while other acts bound for a certain degree of success in the alternative orbit — the riot grrrls par excellence, Babes In Toyland, and Soul Asylum — are either about to debut or still finding their feet. Mark, though, has really very little to do with this disruptive ferment. He plays bass in an obscure rockabilly band called Stagger Lee, but more often vents his passion for folk by performing solo in small local dives, just voice and acoustic guitar, with a repertoire including a few originals and plenty of covers, from Dave Van Ronk to Neil Young, by way of the most famous songwriter Minnesota ever produced, a certain Robert Allen Zimmerman.

The young man is ambitious and has clear musical ideas he wants to assert, even if they're out of step with the trend of the moment. He's crazy about two cornerstone groups of the country-rock tradition, both sharing the word "brothers" in their name: the unsurpassed masters of vocal harmony, the Everly Brothers, and the Flying Burrito Brothers of his personal idol Gram Parsons, inventor and foremost standard-bearer of that magical blend of roots and innovation known as Cosmic American Music. To him, that recipe hasn't lost an ounce of its shine, and the intention to broadly revive it drives his moves, stubborn and against the grain, in a Midwestern metropolis that is musically looking in an entirely different direction. Tired of playing second fiddle to people less talented than himself, Olson decides to start a band of his own, extending the invitation to Marc Perlman and Norm Rogers, respectively guitarist (later converted to bassist, at his request) and drummer of another local outfit, the Neglecters.

The newborn Jayhawks' first shows feature a second guitarist, Steve Retzler, though his involvement is only meant to be temporary. Among the handful of spectators at one of these gigs, Mark spots thirty-year-old Gary Louris, an Ohio musician with a past in the little-known Schnauzer, who has carved out a modest bit of local fame in Minneapolis playing electric guitar in another rockabilly-leaning outfit, the Safety Last, a small local glory with an LP released on Twin/Tone a couple of years earlier. Olson is looking for a reliable right-hand man, but he can't imagine that his colleague, approached for a name or a suggestion, would put himself forward without hesitation. It's the turning point they needed, and it won't be the only one in this crucial phase. At one of the renewed quartet's early shows, opening for none other than Alex Chilton, broker Charlie Pine is in attendance, and comes away so impressed that he offers to manage the band, founds his own label (Bunkhouse), and the following year finances and produces their debut album, eponymous but known from the start as The Bunkhouse Album.

Rough-edged, laid-back, thoroughly genuine, the guys move between country and bluesy grit, adopting a formula that's hardly original but making up for its limits with sincerity and enthusiasm. The reins are held firmly by the young Olson, while the more seasoned Louris takes his liberties mostly through the restless flourishes of his guitar ("Falling Star"). On the few occasions when he takes the lead vocal, he still sounds naive and overly mannered, but the first instances of the two voices intertwining, even in rather simple little scenes, already show decent promise. They may be bare-bones and direct in their youthful exuberance, but in this first heartfelt effort, the Jayhawks manage to be enjoyable enough. The fragrant jingle-jangle of "Let The Critics Wonder" sketches a style that sounds like a reactionary take on the dying Paisley Underground phenomenon. Hopelessly out of step by choice, the Americans indulge in a formula that is actually free enough from the expressive constraints of the era. They have fun and it shows, stringing together a run of young-cowboy ballads (see "Lonesome Memory"), more carefree than those of their contemporaries in the fledgling Giant Sand but equally devoted to the great Yankee tradition and its canon. What shakes things up a little are the appreciable guitar digressions and a meeting of electric and acoustic that already appears well balanced. The four from Minneapolis present themselves with the cheerful cockiness of country boys ("Six Pack On The Dashboard", "Behind Bars"), but Louris's prior experience proves to make a difference: his solid technical command rescues otherwise unremarkable songs from the mediocrity of pure caricature.

These are fast, spry tracks that stick in the memory almost solely for their sharp, populist edge, but which, beneath the surface, also reveal rather good work in terms of arrangements and harmonies, redeeming the limits of a songwriting style that is necessarily basic, bound by genre clichés. "The Liquor Store Came First" echoes early Dylan, imitated with real personality, the right attitude, and an already lush sound, while "King Of Kings" (featuring amateur pianist Pine as a guest) reveals assonances with Fleshtones-style garage-beat (in an unmistakably Americana variant), and "(I'm Not In) Prison" finds the band tapping into the shimmering, Byrds-indebted guitar work of early R.E.M., without ever daring to stray from the well-trodden path of roots conformity. While the bluegrass stylings prove effective enough, delivered with convincing spirit and all the heart required, the aestheticized slide guitar runs elevate a handful of tracks just above average ("Misery Tavern"), making for an honest, frankly more than decent debut.

The Jayhawks quickly sells through its small print run, but doesn't bring about any positive turn of events for its makers. With hindsight, it becomes collector's item material, and has to wait a full quarter-century before being reissued, remastered, by Lost Highway. Charlie's frantic search for a major label still goes nowhere, so Norm Rogers leaves to try his luck with another band, The Cows, and is replaced by Thad Spencer. Meanwhile A&M puts up enough money to record several demos, without ever showing any real interest in signing the four of them. New songs are indeed written and partly recorded, but in October 1988 a serious car accident sidelines Gary Louris for a long stretch, briefly replaced by Dan Gaarder. Discouraged, the guitarist leaves the band and turns to putting his architecture degree to use, while Marc Perlman starts working for a publishing house, Lerner, which will publish a couple of his essays on American cinema five years later. At this point the Jayhawks are effectively finished. The only one who hasn't given up hope is the tireless manager, Charlie Pine, who after much maneuvering manages to get a promise out of Dave Ayers, president of Twin/Tone, that all the demos shelved in the meantime will be released. Gary is urged to contribute by recording the missing electric guitar parts, and, satisfied with the result (and with the production by his friend Jim Rondinelli), decides to give himself and his bandmates a second chance.

The collection comes out at the end of 1989 under the title Blue Earth. It opens very much in keeping with tradition: harmonica, two voices wedded into one timeless vocal line, gorgeous vocal-harmony quilting. Beneath the calm of this thoroughly placid jangle-pop, though, you can already trace the seeds of the alt-rock country reform that the band would carry out so fruitfully just three years later. The warning signs here are strong and clear, and it's no coincidence that the two songs used as bookends would later be revisited (the closing one especially, "Martin's Song," destined to become one of the Minneapolis group's absolute classics thanks to its almost cathartic singalong). The band comes across as particularly laid-back and sensual, especially in those passages where the evocative vocals push their storytelling into the realm of pure enchantment, constantly underpinned by electric scaffolding that's as understated as it is scorching. In tracks that already prove to be quiet killers, like "She's Not Alone Anymore," you can still sense an absolute freshness, a frivolity that casts a spell. While Mark's voice, always the undisputed leader, gives the record an unshakeable classic backbone, Gary's darting guitar work winks at a hazy kind of easy-listening, at the then-fashionable alternative sound of fellow Minneapolis residents Replacements, and at the college-rock of Rem and plenty of others.

The band doesn't yet have the long breath of its epic later work, but the happy little sketches of this transitional record have a simply infectious charm, a transparency, a cleanliness of songwriting and a precision in its mechanics that make it easy to fall for on first listen. The songs are frugal, optimistic and luminous without ever forcing the issue, genuine because they're free of even the slightest formal adulteration. And they're also gorgeous, full of finely crafted electroacoustic fragrances and refrains that may not be dizzying but are already pretty lethal, especially when - as is the case with the lightweight (but authoritative) "Dead End Angel" - Louris is at the helm. Less subdued, more contemplative episodes like "Commonplace Streets" hint at the potential of a band far less inclined toward caricature than certain sounds and poses might suggest. Either way, it's the synergy between the two leads, the dual guitar interplay, that constant, flawless completing of one another, that makes the difference and lights a fire under an album that seems calm on the surface but is actually shot through with a notable underground exuberance - one that bursts its banks in the torrential, thrilling finale of the last track mentioned. The trick works elsewhere too: the rapturous "I'm Still Dreaming, Now I'm Yours" sets a template of melancholy the band will return to again and again, while "Sioux City," with its small-town nostalgia, sketches with the necessary sincerity the quartet's little old-fashioned world, without condemning it to remain a permanent diorama. This bunch is alive and hungry, and has no intention of settling for these sublime, if only, exercises in style.

Even when the formula gets a touch more mannered (the sing-song "Five Cups Of Coffee"), the Jayhawks prove adept at masking the occasional more obvious, easy solution with their unflappable jangle, or with the frontman's hypnotic, sugary timbre. Some tracks remain among the most irresistible in the whole catalogue, mathematically perfect in their pocket-sized populism, achieved without ever resorting to production steroids. We're talking about "The Baltimore Sun," or "Red Firecracker," rustic yet muscular, at once revivalist and cocky, sounding like it's played by lovable showoffs with guitars that bite. There's enough here to tickle purists of Yankee classicism - who won't have much trouble spotting echoes of the Everly Brothers and Flying Burrito Brothers so beloved by Olson - but hidden within the folds of an album conceived this way is also the key to the imminent, quiet revolution. A very good sophomore effort in its own right, then, but also a promise of bolder forays into Americana mythology, a promise that will soon be kept with considerable confidence.

An Americana

Even while remaining a niche record, Blue Earth earns more than flattering reviews. The Village Voice, in particular, hails the Jayhawks as "the only truly significant country-rock band around." Commercial returns are what they are, much like Twin/Tone's promotional firepower, but the hope of the big leap hasn't faded, and the four Minneapolis musicians give up their respective day jobs without regret to devote themselves full-time to the project, touring the States in a battered old ambulance (affectionately nicknamed Bula). Not everyone sticks around, though: Thad Spencer also vacates the drum stool, immediately filled by Ken Callahan.

The real turning point, though, is something else entirely, unexpected, wrapped up in an anecdote that, told today, still has all the flavor of the great rock novels of old. It's 1991. A phone call between the boss of the small Minnesota label, Ayers, and producer George Drakoulias, who held a prominent role at Def American, changes everything: in the background, the notes of that worldly-wise sophomore record prove a genuine revelation to Drakoulias, and a contract with Rick Rubin's stable arrives almost immediately.

Placed in the capable hands of Drakoulias (the man behind the sensational success of the Black Crowes' debut, a feat he repeated that same year with "The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion") and another guru, Brendan O'Brien, the "difficult" third album is actually about as uncomplicated as anything the Jayhawks have ever made. Graced by a couple of star session players like Nicky "the sixth stone" Hopkins and Charley Drayton, plus Heartbreakers organist Benmont Tench (of Tom Petty's band), Hollywood Town Hall shows a band walking with a far more assured stride, thanks in no small part to the round, shimmering production of the two aforementioned professionals. The band opens with a song that already exalts its epic of the marginal, radiant with choral flourishes and elegant piano touches, but also intense thanks to the interweaving guitars, prone to soloing but never striking a pose or indulging in showing off. Rustic harmonica, melodious voices soaring in unison, hammond-organ trimmings: "Crowded In The Wings" is quick to tie itself back to the canons of tradition, a notion later reaffirmed by the returning "Two Angels." Yet any truly roots-leaning temptations are kept in check by the never-rhetorical approach of a record that aims to bring objectively tired musical standards up to date, bending them to a timeless sensibility that nonetheless feels at home in the present (even if in open contrast with the more disruptive currents coming out of the West Coast).

Two distinct registers alternate: one more boldly pop-rock in its writing, Louris's domain, and one that reflects Olson's classicist folk roots. The meeting of these two souls makes for an excellent blend, a jewel of balancing act between revivalism and reforming drive. The songs themselves work exceptionally well, refined easy-listening gems polished with a care for detail and nuance that's consistently remarkable. "Martin's Song" is proof of that, one of the two songs revisited from the previous record, which falls in line with the overall mood of triumphant ease but avoids any further substantial formal tweaks. Or take "Clouds," a lively, velvety, unpretentious rock song, beautifully arranged, able to dodge the genre's traps of caricature or cliché to soar with real authority among the pages of an ideal Americana anthology for the new decade, on a path that several other great bands (Sadies and Richmond Fontaine chief among them) would soon find themselves following.

Here they talk about God and humanity with great plainness and the sincere enthusiasm of a Woody Guthrie, casting their spell above all through the wonderful interplay between Mark's sugary voice and Gary's tart one (especially on "Sister Cry," a breathless chase between the two), and through guitars that are sumptuous but never mannered. And if the Wichita sung about in the song of the same name is the same one from "Wichita Lineman," the immortal classic with which it shares that plain, beautiful everyday epic quality, the spaces evoked in the title of "Nevada, California" are the vast ones encountered along the way, sun-drenched, unspoiled landscapes seen from a deeply Yankee, bigger than life perspective that always keeps nature at its center, with people reduced to mere extras. The cover art is illuminating too, with the band sitting on a sofa à-la Cranberries (just before Dolores and co.) but shot in a wide, distant frame. That stance would be reversed on the following record (and its cover photo), a kind of popular novel in which people return to take absolute center stage.

It's hard, and ultimately pointless, to rank these songs by excellence, though the refrains of "Take Me With You (When You Go)" and "Settled Down Like Rain" are formidable displays of craft that demand an irresistible singalong. Louris's scratchy guitar, recalling the slightly more clattering, blues-leaning sound of the other superbly driven roots outfit Drakoulias was launching around the same years, rounds out the picture, teasing listeners not used to overly polite sounds. Compared to the Robinson brothers' band, there's a touch less virtuosity and meanness here, offset however by a cleanliness in the songwriting and performance that's pretty much unmatched. In short, everything works, in a formula that tastes of high-altitude populism while leaving even the most hardline rock purist's conscience untroubled. There's no hesitation here, but no cheap showing off either. The Jayhawks sound powerful and radiant without ever losing their sense of restraint, without straying from a tradition they're careful never to upend. A good deal of their charm, in the end, lies precisely in this implicit devotion, in playing by the rules while trying to bring updates that are never drastic, thanks to their own rewritings of the canon. Seen this way, the band behind Hollywood Town Hall really does look like a steamroller, a factory of unadulterated charm that enchants with absolute ease and delivers a collection as transparent as it is effortless. The game is played on an utterly literal level, without the particular subtexts or crowd-pleasing symbolism found in so many other bands of the same era.

Any rewriting of country music, even in a less rigorous form than the one proposed by Uncle Tupelo, can no longer ignore their aromatic, hazy roots-rock. The album comes out in September 1992, right in the middle of the grunge storm; it has no trouble winning over critics and, despite belonging to a genre that was hardly in vogue, also performs admirably on the commercial front.

All of 1993 finds the Jayhawks busy on a world tour, with the notable addition of a keyboardist to the lineup, Karen Grotberg, recruited by Mark after he caught a performance by her band, The Ranchtones. In the spring of the following year, the group is back in the studio in Los Angeles, once again with Drakoulias confirmed at the helm. Grotberg is promoted to full member on the spot, but once again they have to deal with the departure of their touring drummer, Ken Callahan, who is temporarily replaced by an outstanding session player, Don Heffington (who had already worked with Bob Dylan).

Tomorrow The Green Grass sees the light of day on Valentine's Day 1995 and makes no secret of its ambition, opening with a technical knockout one-two. The band has lightened its load on a record that promises to be more folk than rock, with acoustic guitars up front and a brand-new, gorgeously airy string section. "Blue" has the honor of setting the table for a record that comes across as both melancholic and sunny, delicate and easygoing all at once. The other single, "I'd Run Away," doesn't betray the new approach and raises the stakes with the roguish piano of the indispensable female new entry, who also contributes backing vocals. What you hear in this opening handful of minutes stands as a snapshot of a band at the peak of its artistic maturity. Judging from the obvious chemistry, you wouldn't guess it, but in their quiet rivalry the two leaders are jostling quite a bit, constantly pushing the bar a little higher. Olson's little gem this time around is called "Miss Williams Guitar," dedicated to singer-songwriter Victoria Williams - his girlfriend at the time - for whose sake he would soon abandon ship and leave the band to its fate. The true star, though, remains his bandmate's electric guitar, with its usual ripples. Clearly, the landscape is no longer at the center of the picture. Now it's love songs' turn, like this one or the far more composed "Two Hearts," where Louris whispers his heart out and paints with an essential touch, mindful of the shading. Even at a relaxed tempo, then, the Minneapolis outfit proves perfectly at home.

The real surge comes with "Real Light," a passage that sets the record alight while still holding on to its heartfelt humanism. Fast episodes like this one mark a significant distance from the more relaxed, meditative tone of the previous album. "Over My Shoulder" moves along similar lines. Viola accompanies Mark on the most subdued, pained track of the bunch. The wonder of small things, of genuine feeling, soaks into every note and christens every melodic nuance, together with that shared, almost communal perspective that helps make Tomorrow The Green Grass a kind of modern pastoral - certainly the band's most deeply Americana work.

What penalizes or favors it, depending on taste, is its unevenness, a constant emotional and tempo rollercoaster. If pride of place goes to the bittersweet gem (with a sharp sixties aftertaste) of "Bad Time", a brilliant cover of Grand Funk Railroad, elsewhere the album lingers in a slightly overwrought melodrama, and this too can weigh negatively on the inevitable comparison (still wide open) with its predecessor. That's the case with "See Him On The Street" and "Ann Jane", even if in the latter the pathos is offset by a modulation of nostalgic inflection that genuinely gives you goosebumps.

The band still proves good-natured and largely radiant right to the end, timing to perfection another of its steamroller refrains on "Nothing Left To Borrow", another solid killer with those harmonies, those violins, that electric guitar so shamelessly lovable, or on the bittersweet, frugal "Red's Song", which rounds off the idyll with a touch of relaxed self-satisfaction. The dip at the close is natural but not too pronounced, cushioned by sheer craft ("Pray For Me") or by rushing, childlike enthusiasm ("Ten Little Kids"), and it doesn't undermine the success of a genuinely inspired, convincing album. One that sells better than anything the band has put out before, if still less than hoped. With a new world tour, though, the end of the year also brings a new drummer, destined to break the curse of the vacant stool and establish himself among the ranks of the Jayhawks to come. Already Joe Henry's trusted man, his name is Tim O'Reagan, he's from Kansas City, and he has one album to his name with his previous band, The Leatherwoods.

First interlude: Gary and the roots supergroup

Gary Louris and Marc Perlman are the first Jayhawks members to allow themselves the luxury of a holiday from the band. A bizarre leave, but a rather precious one, spent in the ranks of a supergroup born almost as a joke in late-Eighties Minneapolis and which quickly became an essential cult phenomenon in the indie underground. Golden Smog, a name borrowed from one of Fred Flintstone's aliases in "The Flintstones", actually have murky origins and certainly didn't include the two musicians in their first incarnation: a cover band alternating between Eagles and Stones material, billed variously as The Take It To The Limit Band or Her Satanic Majestic's Paycheck, made up of Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner and Dan Murphy, future Son Volt man Jim Boquist, and Martin Zellar of the Gear Daddies. By the early Nineties, Pirner and Murphy's side project had taken on a more defined shape and a steadier live presence, opening its doors, besides the two Jayhawks, to Kraig Johnson of Run Westy Run and Replacements drummer Chris Mars. It's this lineup that first holes up in the studio and releases a debut EP in 1992, On Golden Smog, almost as a lark (as confirmed by the choice of disguises, pseudonyms adopted due to contractual obligations with their respective labels and crafted by combining their middle name with the name of the street they grew up on).

Five covers in an Americana vein drawing on the most disparate sources (from the Rolling Stones to Thin Lizzy), with the gem of a pickup — "Easy To Be Hard", relaxed but intriguing — taken, of all things, from the musical "Hair"; a mini-album recorded purely as a pastime if nothing else, which nevertheless has at least one significant knock-on effect: the revisiting of Bad Company's "Shooting Star" (Paul Rodgers of Free's other band), sung by Pirner with his usual emphasis, ends up on the soundtrack of an unexpected 1994 film hit, Kevin Smith's generation-defining "Clerks".

The picture changes radically over the following two years, with the departures of Pirner and Mars, the arrival of Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, and a greater commitment poured by everyone into this side venture, borne out by the strong quality and quantity of the original songs written specifically for the group. So Golden Smog's full-length debut, Down By The Old Mainstream (released by Rykodisc in 1995), comes across as a genuine surprise in every respect. The welcome card of "V" is raw enough but shows a formidable melodic instinct. The flavor is that of old friends getting back together, earthy and a touch rowdy. At times the loose, laid-back attitude tips into the theatrical, much like the roots caricature that animates the musicians involved, over the top but in a genuine way. In terms of quality, though, these songs are no joke at all.

"Ill Fated" is another telling title. The jangle-pop shines, Gary's electric guitar roars unrestrained, while Jeff and Kraig are called on to harmonize, very much along the lines of Louris and Olson. The memorable chorus is just the first of a long series for this jovial crew, in the name of an Americana far less stiff than the standard. "Pecan Pie", an acoustic sketch that is pure Tweedy, as marginal as you like but highly effective in its aromatic Yankee inflections. On "Yesterday Cried" and the dusky "Williamton Angel", a tattered yet still enchanting display of romanticism (if you're in the right frame of mind), Johnson casts his spell with that whiny, tart, meowing voice of his, favoring mild cadences but not skimping on melodic caresses or tempting traditional slide-guitar flourishes. Things go even better with the fired-up (and unhinged) alt-country of "Friend", whose vibrations and nervous drafts give heft to a performance that's suitably raw and bleeding, while also making up for Kraig's artistic and character limitations. The outcome is less flattering for him when that same delivery, pushed a bit too far into semi-amateur territory, ends up grating ("He's A Dick", a title that's in some ways a statement of intent).

In a thoroughly enjoyable collection like Down By The Old Mainstream, however, the truly striking tracks are few. Chief among them is perhaps "Nowhere Bound", thanks to the theatrical (but inspired) stamp of the ever-controversial Dave Pirner, on a song that could genuinely pass for a miraculous outtake from "Grave Dancers Union", minus the syrup of that multi-million-selling bestseller. "Glad & Sorry" takes the prize for most unforgettable riff (credit due to the author of the original, Ronnie Lane of the Faces), still very much in keeping with a homespun production, a record written or arranged in any case off the cuff, "one take and done". In this context Louris certainly doesn't come off badly and, in fact, leaves an indelible mark with his own forays. He bursts in rather late with "Won't Be Coming Home" and its highly enjoyable twang-pop, though without quite shaking off a sense of business as usual and without straying from his own band's template, especially the sound of the recent Tomorrow The Green Grass. That's no coincidence, since it's actually a leftover from that very last record co-credited to Mark Olson.

If the liveliest episodes remain the ones penned by Murphy — who, besides the opener, throws the anthemic (and endearingly small-town) "Red Headed Stepchild" into the mix, forever chasing his bandleader — the ones sung by Jeff sit among the unremarkable but inoffensive: the cover of Bobby Patterson's "She Don't Have to See You" has just the right singer-songwriter attitude, "Walk Where He Walked" can boast echoes of the rough-hewn, genuine Wilco of certain minor outings (the Guthrie-inspired reworkings of the "Mermaid Avenue" series), but despite their cheeky charm these remain dispensable tracks. The closer, "Radio King", a previously unheard Tweedy-Louris joint venture (practically the cream of an entire scene), is however a keeper, a happily minor, ancillary release that still manages to sting.

One might think of this record as a wholly impromptu party, but by now the guys had gotten so into it that they couldn't give up the side toy, and the magnificent results prove how sound their shared choice was. Noah Levy of the Honeydogs departs, and another star takes a seat behind the drum kit: the legendary Big Star drummer Jody Stephens. Gary will no longer be Michael Macklyn, Marc "disowns" Raymond Virginia, since every legal obligation over the use of his own name in the credits has now lapsed.

Golden Smog's sophomore effort comes out again on Rykodisc in October 1998, produced by Brian Paulson (chosen for the excellent job he'd done for the Jayhawks the year before): it's titled Weird Tales, after the pulp magazine of the same name from the Thirties and Forties that it openly pays tribute to, both on the cover and in the booklet, and it commands the attention of the lucky few who get to hear it for the masterpiece it is, a landmark of Nineties roots rock.

The opening is nothing short of thunderous, a Soul Asylum-style gallop whose ambitions are boosted by a lively choral structure and the superior caliber of the people involved. A solid introduction to the album, a collection of triumphant power-pop outpourings, both knowing and contagious.

"Until You Came Along", simply one of the best songs Louris has ever written (not for nothing often revived live with the Jayhawks too), doubles down: striking authority, a nostalgic yearning of the finest grain, plus an exquisite rendering of Americana's expressive tenets, from the jingle-jangle of the guitars to flawless harmonizing. A masterpiece that asks for nothing more than to be sung along with the band without reservation. In between, Johnson's first contribution has an unmistakable roots stamp, free of academic posing or tedious classicist sprawl. The tone stays sparkling throughout, an all-out celebration of melody orchestrated by a genuine easy-listening war machine.

The choruses are all memorable, even those entrusted to Kraig Johnson's frail voice (the emblematic "If I Only Had A Car"), wonderfully chiseled by dusky electric guitars or the vocal backing of the rest of the gang. The band's breath has grown longer, a reflection of a rock-solid epic quality even in its marginality, and of a truly insane balance of forces. No less impressive are the arrangements or the string flourishes, never intrusive or gaudy, a superb complement whenever Louris the seducer resurfaces, as on a "Jane" far more frugal and intimate in its pretty electro-acoustic little dress (with Stephens brushing the drums). You don't always need to bowl the listener over with heavy artillery to leave a mark, not when you have a voice as velvety as this one. And if the love song leans a bit toward sweetness, all the better — you soften up for a moment and the payoff is guaranteed. Even when traveling in a more intimate dimension, Golden Smog still sound thoroughly warm. "Lost Love", for instance, has the intimate cut typical of Jeff's pen and pays tribute to the country-folk tradition with superb commitment, better than in Uncle Tupelo or early Wilco.

What's especially appealing is the blatantly playful tone of several tracks, a sign of a band not just on form but also keen on having fun without, however, sinking into the typical self-satisfied supergroup horseplay. The bond of friendship among the musicians, all of them particularly inspired, comes through loud and clear. It's obvious that the energy isn't being squandered on idle exercises in style, and much of the credit goes to a Tweedy who, cheeky as he is, stays absolutely in character. Even the sharpest, most stylized passages come off thoroughly convincing, "I Can't Keep From Talking" above all. Johnson is rough-edged but goes straight to the heart with the bare-bones feel of a loose-limbed track, sour folk but also blues, a formidable celebration of an entire background. But there's no chance to catch your breath, because the gems keep coming one after another without a break. No exception is the heartstring-tugging ballad "Reflections On Me", where Murphy shows once again that he can steal tricks of the trade from his direct superior, that Dave Pirner absent here, impersonated with unmistakable success while yet another killer refrain is added to the list. The more reflective, singer-songwriter-leaning tracks mix with the more muscular ones or those with stronger college-rock credentials, for a triumph of Nineties American alternative music built with real craftsmanship and all-round care. If Weird Tales sounds this good and this convincing, it's because, for once, there's not a single weak link in the chain, and everyone contributes at their best, especially the so-called second string.

There's also the most unhinged, nervy and jagged track, "White Shell Road", penned by Gary, which already anticipates some of the wonderfully restless drift of his band's following album, and without Bob Ezrin's garish makeup job to boot. But sketches like "Please Tell My Brother" are just as marvelous, acoustic miniatures that go well beyond simple filler to contribute other stories, other striking images and homemade hooks to memorize, to the overall picture. "Fear Of Falling" is yet another song penned by Louris (with Tweedy and Stephens) that deserves an ovation, for its sincerity and that invariably intriguing melancholy, sketched out by his tart vocals and the obligatory harmonica. The farewell is set up by the subtle psychedelia of an atmospheric soliloquy faintly transfigured by overexposed grain, "All The Same To Me", and sealed by one last piece of magic from a Gary in a state of grace: it's called "Jennifer Save Me", a sentimental gem only slightly smudged by a few evocative spacey detournements and a handful of very disciplined noise inserts.

Right at the best moment, however, the adventure grinds to a halt. Jeff puts out a couple of era-defining albums with Wilco, Gary and Marc are kept busy with their main band, the (temporary) demise of Soul Asylum weighs negatively on Murphy, and in short, Golden Smog vanish into obscurity in no time. It takes a full eight years for the old gang to shake off its torpor and reunite to shape some new music. The comeback is titled Another Fine Day, hits stores in the summer of 2006, and reveals from the very first moment an almost obsessive attention to sonic detail. The guitars bite, polished, noisy, charging ahead, but compared to the now-distant predecessor something seems to have broken: the magic and the joyful recklessness of the early releases have been somewhat lost. While on a formal level the arrival at a flawless alt-rock is undeniable, at the same time there creeps in the impression of homework diligently done, more to punch the clock than out of genuine passion. The title track fares well, with Gary happily world-weary again amid a thicket of reverb and shadowy digressions, and the same can be said of the traditionalist detour of "Long Time Ago" (complete with banjo), still on the Louris-Tweedy axis, pretentious but pleasant. Yet even in passages that manage to be this engaging or lush, the genuine thrill is missing.

"5-22-02" is an amused, lively number, with good vibes and a sturdy rock-blues build. You can feel the echo of the semi-Copernican revolution Wilco had pulled off in the meantime (and partly of Smile's pop turn, evident in the garish bravado of "Corvette"), but in this case the results taste a tad mannered, a replica with the first whiff of formula. Within the band, Louris's stock rises as he plays just about everything (wurlitzer, omnichord, glockenspiel and mellotron included), gets a little carried away, and at times cares too much about form, leaving the heart in a drawer (a yawn-inducing "Gone"), while Tweedy relegates himself to the background, limiting himself to singing on just three tracks, including a lovely cover of the Kinks-esque "Strangers".

Murphy's contribution tends toward the dismal for once, caught between the blustering arena-rock of "Hurricane" (in the vein of his Soul Asylum's worst moments) and the sourish ballad "Never Felt Before", memorable only for its glibness and contrived pretensions; Kraig Johnson, on the other hand, stays afloat, decent on the episodes he writes and sings, considering he's the least talented of this crew we're talking about (still, the fired-up "Frying Pan Eyes" and the closing duet "Think About Yourself", with Gary, are worth praising).

A celebratory tone prevails, as grandiose as it is pointless, so that several good tracks - including the heavily reverbed "Beautiful Mind" - get lost in a futile parade of assorted showing-off, muscle and feedback. There are too many songs, often too solemn and too long, and that keeps an otherwise well-meaning album like Another Fine Day from ever taking off. Perfectionism has clamped down on a project whose crowning virtues used to be immediacy and radical expressive freedom. Golden Smog seem to have sacrificed fun and weirdness in favor of professionalism, especially on the technical side, and for once the result is disappointing.

With the exception of the departing (and by now thoroughly unenthusiastic) Tweedy, the band chooses to carry on anyway, and within a few months releases a new collection, Blood On The Slacks, too brief for a proper LP but substantial enough for a simple EP. As the jokey, Dylan-referencing title suggests, the guys largely recover the swaggering pose of their early work, or rather, a happy inclination toward chaos, a luminous sloppiness that makes the wonderfully chaotic opener "Can't Even Tie Your Own Shoes" especially enjoyable.

The mood stays fizzy and good-humored on "Look At You Now", maybe a bit cartoonish but undeniably classy, on "Scotch On Ice", which is something of its acoustic counterpart, and on the brisk, derailed punk of "Insecure", which closes the show. A good cover of Bowie's famous "Starman", aestheticizing almost out of necessity, will please any fans of the band in its most polished incarnation, while the other cover, of Dinosaur Jr's "Tarpit" by the Dinosaur Jr, has Kraig Johnson appropriating indie-rock through his own distinctive alt-country inflection. Nothing earth-shattering, in short. Golden Smog themselves seem to have come to the same conclusion, having kept recording silence ever since.

Sorrisi e bugie

By the end of 1995, the Jayhawks really seem to have the wind at their backs. Good reviews both at home and in Europe, a new drummer who promises to stick around for a while, the unconditional support of their own label. It's a genuine bolt from the blue, then, when the statement arrives in which Mark Olson announces his intention to leave his bandmates in order to devote himself fully to Victoria Williams, the singer-songwriter suffering from multiple sclerosis whom he has just married. His move to Joshua Tree, California, effectively ends a rivalry with Gary Louris that had been as subterranean as it was wearing. There were too many songs written by each of them given the limited room allowed on any single record, and too binding the decision not to flood the band's releases.

For those who remain, the blow is hard to absorb, and the press is already ringing the death bell for the band. With its undisputed leader out of the picture, a break-up really does seem just a step away. Gary, for his part, doesn't lose heart and quietly organizes a reshuffle. He first brings in his friend Kraig Johnson, guitarist and singer of Run Westy Run (on the Sst roster), with whom he shares the Golden Smog experience, then also recruits Johnson's partner (also his bandmate in the O'Jeez project, alongside the ever-present Dave Pirner), Jessy Greene, violinist for the Geraldine Fibbers. The resulting sextet shuts itself away in the studio with Brian Paulson, producer of Uncle Tupelo, Wilco and Son Volt, and with the usual George Drakoulias. The result is the Minneapolis outfit's fifth album, Sound Of Lies, the poignant work of a band that has (temporarily) concluded its search through the territories of tradition and finally shows itself free of any expressive pressure whatsoever.

Right from the start it's pure class, with a ballad dominated by piano and that melancholy gloom that remains one of Louris's trademark moods. It takes only a few minutes to realize that alt-country is a memory, and a distant one at that, since the new Jayhawks have staked their chips on an armor-plated pop-rock singer-songwriter formula, relentless in its melodic grip and its obvious debts to John Lennon. "The Man Who Loved Life" is a solid, flawless song, sentimental without being maudlin, a tank given wings by Grotberg's choral backing. The move toward noisier territory, open to a subtle psychedelic revival, is clear, but what makes the difference is the wonderful mix of aggression and tenderness, a Gary more sure of himself than ever, and his wildly animated guitar, now darting and effects-laden, now nervy and pointed, downright dizzying as it piles up electric breakers in the finale of "Think About It" (something unthinkable with Olson still in the band). A betrayal of the previous aesthetic, sure, but also a show of courage for a band that refuses to be pinned down once and for all and chooses, unflinchingly, to look ahead. Tenderness, after all, has always been in the singer's wheelhouse, and on "Trouble" he outdoes himself in nostalgic contemplation, caressing the listener with that so very affable voice of his. There's no longer a felt need for harmonies with his former partner at all costs, because his new role as the man in charge has given him just the right backbone. And to round it all off, the graceful choral support of two highly capable sidemen - the keyboardist and the new drummer - is all that's needed.

We can't flag a single song here that isn't beautiful, perhaps because lightness guides the musicians' pens as never before. A tone of irrepressible wonder, childlike amazement and enthusiasm drive the Jayhawks on this occasion, and once again the band refuses to carry the banner for this or that movement, choosing instead to sing only for themselves, with heart, setting aside grand schemes and flowing as freely as the piano keys. There are strings, but nothing academic or forced about them. They counterpoint the dominance of the two lead instruments, lending further clarity to a sound already geared toward grace and crispness. So passages of extreme beauty follow one another without a break, like the killer refrains that are something of Louris's trademark, regularly lethal singalongs. The big single paying tribute to Alex Chilton raises both the carefree quotient and the amount of shimmer, placing the Minnesota outfit among the most joyfully power-pop acts of a decade in which the genre enjoys an unexpected second youth. The frontman's intimate tone makes it all the more believable, especially in the new charging electric free-for-all that closes out "Big Star" itself, as in the gem "Haywire", which carries the same seductive spell as other devotees of the Chilton gospel from the same years, whom the Jayhawks have come to resemble (far more than their old comrades Wilco): Teenage Fanclub.

With "Poor Little Fish" our heroes also look toward a dark-pop sound with mild lysergic inflections, borrowing well-worn late-Sixties formulas but adapting them to their own worldly-wise (and irrepressibly optimistic) sensibility. It's easy-listening crafted to perfection, smooth, engaging and never predictable, an unconditional surrender (except for certain self-important critics), steered by Louris at his best, a languid seducer and a priceless confidant. On the second side a trace of unease creeps in, an altogether minor element that nevertheless helps keep the band's songs from freezing into an aura of empty optimism or giggly euphoria. Gary is a master of shading and of dangerous crossings between the tart and the sugary, as when he manages not to muddle (and still makes genuinely interesting) a happily elusive, shapeshifting "Sixteen Down", graced by a top-shelf guest like Matthew Sweet. Restlessness and aggression coexist in superb balance on another five-star episode, "Dying On The Vine", now sullen, now enchanting, proof of how the band can speak on multiple levels at once when no stylistic straightjacket limits its movements. The closing catharsis, of crystalline beauty, is the certificate of a now-undeniable rebirth in new guise.

The closing trio of songs marks a providential slowdown, handled with undeniable mastery. First with a remarkable, slightly bitter ballad entrusted to O'Reagan (who proves a fine songwriter and arranger), "Bottomless Cup"; then with a modest acoustic title track that softens and cradles the listener with Gary's velvet voice (like a melodious lullaby) and a sensational chamber-music coda; finally with another liberating flight, worthy of the one "My Little Corner Of The World" provides on the masterpiece released the same year by Yo La Tengo. The emancipation from the old register is complete, the rewriting of country tradition represents (for now) a closed chapter. All that remains is the alt- prefix, which brings the band back under the wing of a more generic alternative clan, among its less daring interpreters, perhaps, but also among its most authoritative and self-aware.

As (partly) predictable, Sound Of Lies rubs longtime fans the wrong way. Much of the critical establishment reacts in similar fashion, unable to shake off the convenient stereotype pinned on the Minnesota outfit in order to assess their work with due objectivity. It's a real shame. Thankfully, though, that's not enough to dampen the appetite of the new frontman, happily intolerant of convenient pigeonholing and genre fences, who has yet another surprise in store.

The Jayhawks' sixth album, Smile, came out in May 2000. After a long and fruitful partnership, George Drakoulias was passed over for production duties in favour of two seasoned mainstream hands, Bob Ezrin and Jay Healy. American Recordings was now being distributed by Sony under the Columbia imprint, and Karen Grotberg had left to raise her newborn daughter, though she'd still contributed to writing and recording several of the new songs (live, she'd be replaced for a couple of years by Jen Gunderman of Dag). The band's return, carried by the caressing title track, finds Louris immediately and particularly inspired. The sound had opened up even more blatantly towards pop-rock, but Ezrin's hyper-caloric polish doesn't weigh the songs down - they're mutant easy-listening creatures whose natural knack for the singalong has gone completely unchecked. Gary toys with slightly contrived big ballads, but his mastery of the chorus is by now unstoppable. The alternative-scene faithful were thinning out, but among the few new admirers were advertising creatives, who discovered the Jayhawks a few years late and opened up unexpected avenues in terms of commercial fallout. "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me", licensed to Ralph Lauren, stands as the crowning moment of this drift, but setting aside any prejudice, the overall quality remains pretty high.

There's no shortage of deviant, sugar-spiked songwriting, like "What Led Me To This Town". The syrupy shadings and chrome highlights added by the producer don't distort a delightful song with an (by now buried) folk soul. An even more genuine authorial streak resurfaces here and there, amid acoustic fragrances and a few transparent choral trimmings. The charms offered by "Broken Harpoon" or the populist "Mr. Wilson" - a sort of instant classic that's also a catchy (and crowd-pleasing) bit of fun - are more than enough reward for longtime fans, the few who've stuck around. So this (much-maligned) record lines up at least four gems right away, songs to belt out alongside Gary and his new female foil. "Somewhere In Ohio" and the spirited "Queen Of The World" open the door to synths, to an electronic coating that's never invasive, yet the result is surprisingly fresh and carefree, thanks to songwriting that's as solid as ever and to the arrangers' instinct, light-handed in their half-revolution. Gary's guitar, true to form, still revs up and tears down the road, providing a stimulating contrast to certain decorative mawkishness. The inflated, steroidal sound never tips into mere fakery, because the Jayhawks manage to adapt profitably to this bold new musical outfit, and ride its noisier tones with real skill.

A handful of decidedly lesser episodes don't spoil what is certainly not a landmark record but is still a convincing one: the mannered, slightly saccharine "A Break In The Clouds", more craft-by-numbers than genuine fire, and above all the unseemly mess of "(In My) Wildest Dreams", really too bad to be true. Making up for the bad impression are a couple of gems that are more properly rock and noisy, a license granted to the frontman's happy electric exuberance. The ever more reliable Perlman and O'Reagan do the rest, raising a rhythmic wall equal to the occasion whenever needed. It sounds almost like an answer to their friends Wilco's new direction, a brazen move past the now-worn alt-country schematics of the decade just filed away, which their veteran cunning occasionally downgrades into anthemic classic-rock (the dutiful filler "Pretty Things"). The closing stretch still has two excellent songs in store for the listener. If "Better Days" replicates the magic of the opener, with an enchanting refrain and the usual poetics of the outsider dusted off with timely grace, the frothing "Baby Baby Baby" is a grand and far from predictable farewell, a litmus test of a band still hungry and in excellent shape, physically and mentally.

Second interlude: Mark, with and without the Creekdippers

While the Jayhawks embark on their bold post-Mark Olson pop-rock turn, out in Joshua Tree the songwriter's married life goes on peacefully, not without its own creative sparks. Mark and Victoria form a shared band with multi-instrumentalist Mike "Razz" Russell, the Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers (later simply the Creekdippers), which over the years would be enriched by guests of the calibre of ex-Black Crowes man Marc Ford, former Screaming Trees member Barrett Martin, John Convertino of Calexico, and Don Heffington.

The new adventure kicks off in 1997 with the well-received The Original Harmony Ridge Creek Dippers and the understated tones of a never-overdone quest for American roots. Slow pace, generally long-breathed songs, pauperist country-folk with a tangy aftertaste and earthy shades. Listen closely and you'll find it doesn't take much to hit the mark: soft lighting, a couple of acoustic guitars at a more than moderate tempo, occasional cameos from harmonica, banjo or violin, and just a touch of choral backing, as fragile as it is refined. Olson is the absolute star of the show - with his indelible classicist touch, limpid gaze ("Be On My Way", lovely) and old-fashioned grace - while Victoria limits herself to sprinkling sparing vocal flourishes around the edges. The grace of their partnership, candid and essential, occasionally ("Valentine King", "Run With The Ponies", "When School Begins") reaches near-stunning heights, but otherwise doesn't stray from the mould of a small collection of intimate, homespun songs, lit up by the immediacy and sincerity of an always dignified lo-fi sound (the flowers-in-the-desert ballad "Jericho" is emblematic).

The trio wastes no time, and the following year releases Pacific Coast Rambler, a sophomore effort that follows in its predecessor's footsteps, with good-natured, heartfelt country-folk packed with marital duets (and violins), opening up a few modest ecstatic vistas ("Give My Heart To You", the title track) without, however, offering the listener any particular flashes of brilliance. The production is homely, the delivery understated, the dress still exclusively acoustic: after the strong debut, this outfit increasingly shows it wants to be not just a matter of the heart but also an offering for a select, very select few, to whom it gifts another collection of fragile, unadorned ballads, not without a resolute emotional fervour all the same ("Prayer Of The Changing Leaf"). Spark, in any case, is something this little California-based band clearly lacks.

1999 then brings Zola And The Tulip Tree. Mark once again charms with his unmistakable voice, but does so within a frame that's once again too frugal and reserved to leave a memorable mark. He prefers instead to play the card of a chloroform-laced songwriting style, the seasoned storyteller without too much backbone ("Cedric Harper"), or to take refuge in wordy, ambition-free sketches, somewhat like the miserable, sad Vic Chesnutt of his self-produced records. What wins out this time are his wife's disorienting, wild flights of storytelling, "Lorna Doones Garden" chief among them. So the parallels with the Jayhawks always play out in miniature, with pale copies of fleeting, scattered suggestions ("Into The Yard", the lovely "Custom Detroit Railroad") that can't get anyone too excited.

Only a few months pass before My Own Jo Ellen partly shifts the perspective. At last an electric guitar and drums resurface, and the voice rings out again in its wonderfully tart modulation. Nothing truly dazzling, mind you, but it's a different gear altogether, and on the thread of memory the listening experience becomes thoroughly enjoyable once more. "Someone To Talk With" is already a nice jolt, and "Linda Lee" immediately, unmistakably recalls the Jayhawks (a return that's geographical too - "Walking Through Nevada" - as well as expressive, with "Rainbow Of My Heart" sounding like a slowed-down outtake from Hollywood Town Hall).

Mark's songs start having substance, structure and a pathos that had been silenced for too long. Williams's minimalism is left with the scraps, and unsurprisingly those are the more caricatured episodes, like "Ben Johnson's Creek".

The tireless crew let another couple of years pass, then resurface with December's Child, the fifth release in their catalogue. The approach grows, if anything, even more refined on this new album, though the tone goes back to being purely intimate, luminous yet withdrawn ("Climb These Steps", "Still We Have A Friend"). A few vocal or arrangement quirks try to liven up songs that, while pleasant, have gone back to being a bit too resigned, placid and bloodless ("Alta's Song"), with the surprising exception of the boozy finale of "One Eyed Black Moses".

While the title track plays with age-old delta-blues tropes, blending them with the band's lively country-folk sensibility for a shifting, interesting result, the genuine, traditionalist ballads once again don't fail to show up (take "How Can This Be"). "Back To The Old Homeplace" would seem destined to remain a good intention only on paper, though its oddly playful streak doesn't fail to charm, and then comes "Say You'll Be Mine" which - featuring guest Gary Louris - turns out, to all intents and purposes, to be a new Jayhawks song circa 1995.

The Creekdippers keep writing and offering up their out-of-fashion music from a quiet, secluded niche, where time seems to have stopped. Over the course of a couple of months, in spring 2004, they put out two new works, the first of which, Mystic Theatre, represents an interesting expressive jolt. From its opening it would seem like a return to a more linear, conventional kind of songwriting, with good Americana flavours throughout (from "No Water No Wood" to the elegance of "Wood In Broken Hills") with just the odd emphatic exception that piques curiosity (the excellent "Salome"). In truth, this is perhaps the most uneven, original and best-produced record in the Creekdippers' catalogue. The album is exactly what its title promises, a little work that dramatizes certain singer-songwriter clichés while at the same time gilding them with the mystical aura of the deepest backcountry. Standing out are "Grand Army Of The Republic", with its harsh folkloric solutions à la David Eugene Edwards, the gospel of "Bells Of St. Mary" and the mixed-breed "Rock Slide", gorgeous. It's then inevitable that Victoria returns in full as co-lead with her unmistakable timbre, on "Betsy Dupree" and in the stumbling delta blues of "It Don't Bother Me" and "Bath Song", to decent effect. The second effort of the season is titled Political Manifest. The fruit trees on the cover are the same ones tied to the farmhands described by Woody Guthrie in the pages of "Bound For Glory", and it's inevitable that an album with such a title can't help but look to that great master, explicitly evoked too in the loose-limbed intro of "Poor GW". The commendable message is naturally brought up to date with the States of the Bush administration years - the president is attacked head-on in "George Bush Industriale" - amid fresh hardship and a climate of widespread distrust that finds its emblem in the heartfelt "Portrait Of A Sick America". Between a touch too much Dylan-isms ("Duck Hunting") and a Williams who's gone back to being too placid and didactic too soon ("Senator Byrd Speech"), the result falls a little short of expectations and doesn't come across as evocatively as it would have liked.

After seven albums together, the partnership between Olson and Williams had nonetheless reached its end point. The end of their collaboration in the Creekdippers was soon followed, in 2006, by divorce. Left alone in Joshua Tree with his disappointments, Mark nonetheless found the drive needed to look within himself once more and make the most of the many ideas sketched out in his existential notebook. The result is The Salvation Blues, the first work credited solely to him in more than twenty years of career. This is a pained, deeply intimate record, a path of private redemption that doesn't hide wounds both old and fresh (his father's suicide in "National Express", the end of his relationship with Victoria) but is able to look with confidence beyond the abyss ("Look Into The Night"), blending with superb measure singer-songwriter conventions, alt-country flavours and subtle blues intrusions ("Winter Song"). This first solo step therefore shapes up as a meditative album that still cuts deep for its sincerity ("Tears From Above"), while never abandoning a restrained sense of decoration, and offers slow but alive, inspired songs that tell of a search for redemption through simplicity and harmony ("Clifton Bridge", the title track).

Three years later Olson returns to record shops with a work of an altogether different tenor. Many Colored Kite is a more optimism-oriented album, reopening the door now to airy jangle-pop ("Little Bird Of Freedom"), now to a disciplined chamber sound ("Beehive"), now even to crooked, Nick Drake-style folk, aided too by a trio of luxury guests (Vashti Bunyan, Julie Doiron and jack-of-all-trades Neal Casal) and by the graceful accompaniment of his new Norwegian partner, Ingunn Ringvold, known artistically as Sailorine. The result is an album of warm stillness and relaxed contemplation, a collection brimming with gratitude, where Mark also finds a way to finally lay the ghost of Williams to rest ("No Time To Live Without Her"). Nothing especially striking beyond a fine piece of craftsmanship, propped up where needed by solid professional skill in the slower moments, always keeping a safe distance from the blueprint of the now-uncomfortable band he once steered.

The latest chapter of our man's solo adventure is, to date, Good-bye Lizelle, an album born amid countless troubles, of all places in the Czech Republic. The first impact is rather surprising. Accompanied by the harmonium of his Scandinavian wife, Mark turns to unprecedented baroque solutions and seems to be looking more at the English scene of the late sixties than at his usual stomping ground. The coordinates and sounds remain decidedly anomalous on the following "Running Circles" too, a sort of folk madrigal with arcane overtones that would seem more suited to the survivors of New Weird America, from Greg Weeks to Meg Baird. It can be disorienting to find Olson grappling with influences alien to his Yankee repertoire, but the artist proves able to slip into the role with a happy grasp of the genre's clichés, spinning his tale with the necessary ease, though without fully shaking off a certain didactic tone. Then here he is falling back into line with tradition, resuming his game with his own classicism without upending it, playing at will with the reflexes of a sparkling alt-country, pleasantly tilted toward rock, or favouring pared-down reworkings. But craft is always the dominant factor, and whether things go more or less well, it never goes much beyond candid, lukewarm sketches. Among the exceptions is the original "Jesse In An Old World", an opening onto a Middle Eastern exoticism that isn't as theatricalized as one might expect on a Piers Faccini album: not memorable, but sincere in its own sinuous drifting.

An unexpected convergence

2001 marks the Jayhawks' loss of Kraig Johnson (who chooses to devote himself to his new project Iffy) and Jen Gunderman. The lineup is pared down to the bone, but Gary doesn't flinch. For the new year he plans an entirely acoustic tour alongside Tim, Marc and ex-Long Ryders man Stephen McCarthy, a true master of slide guitar, after which the group shuts itself away in the studio with Ethan Johns, already a trusted producer for Ryan Adams and Brendan Benson. The band's seventh album, Rainy Day Music, hits stores in April 2003, led off by "Stumbling Through The Dark". Surprise: the tone is more restrained, understated, frugal. The dreamy jangle-pop of the Blue Earth days is back, that luminous, bare-bones pauperism that makes do with whatever little wood it has to burn. Electric and acoustic go back to sharing the stage like good siblings, in a picture of admirable balance, and the new ballads look once again to the Americana tradition, to a sturdy country-folk ("Tailspin", with its banjo), cutting away in particular the adulterations of the previous releases. The Jayhawks retract their very personal post-Olson pop drift and seem to be casting a line straight to their old bandmate, a rough sketch of reconciliation that can't help but win the obvious applause of anyone who had scorned the previous turn.

There's no shortage of inspired songs, even if there's no truly standout episode to point to. Louris proves once again to be a fox: he lowers every degree of difficulty to coast along on tried-and-true songwriting, a formula that by now holds no secrets for him. He deploys it with embarrassing ease and lulls the listener with unfailingly pleasant solutions, though only rarely does he actually enchant. That's the case with the little gem "Save It For A Rainy Day", with "You Look So Young" and with the more heartfelt "Angelyne" (an old-fashioned love song), the only passages to deliver any genuine thrill, reminiscent of the golden years. The second of these stands out in particular, making no secret of the frontman's irrepressible pop leanings, the kind capable of staying with you and warming the heart just enough.

For the rest, our man doesn't stray from the standards of a good-natured, harmless power-pop with an intimate bent, graceful but never sharp, compensating for its limits with his usual craftsmanship. From time to time he stirs things up to decent effect ("The Eyes Of Sarahjane", thanks to a nimble Hammond organ), but beyond its vaguely aestheticizing dress, its stylistic and emotional offering remains skin-deep.

Even the lovely "One Man's Problem" has no way of rising to excellence despite a particularly well-judged refrain, while the dusty desert-folk sketch of "Madman" languishes in its own indolence, devoid of even the slightest dramatic charge. So the album flows by, sounding amiable but short on real substance, a tasteful and lightweight sonic accompaniment that lacks backbone, blood and nerve. O'Reagan, as writer and lead voice, makes his mark with "Don't Let The World Get In Your Way" and looks to the revolutionary Wilco of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" ("The Ashes Of American Flags" in particular), from which he pilfers scattered shadows and unease, but he seems to lack the necessary romantic depth and, frankly, fails to excite. He fares little better with "Tampa To Tulsa", an update of the travel diaries of "Nevada, California" that tends toward the soporific. The chase after Jeff Tweedy's creature also fails for Gary and his "Come To The River" (with Jakob Dylan guesting on backing vocals), bogged down by its saccharine refrain and an entirely simulated bite. The two-voice closer "Will I See You in Heaven", written by Marc Perlman alone and all tact (and political correctness), is a nice little consolation prize for incurable nostalgics, ahead of a reprise that adds nothing.

Successful in its aim, and a strategically smart move as a way out of a dead end, Rainy Day Music nonetheless remains an inconclusive, overrated work whose true gem is its minimalist cover, which really is genuinely beautiful. What matters, in any case, is that the postcard reaches Olson in Joshua Tree right as Victoria's love for him begins to fade. In little more than two years Mark loses everything all over again, including the esteemed marital project of the Creekdippers. He doesn't abandon the desert, but his trips to Minnesota grow gradually less sporadic. Despite Gary's repeatedly mooted retirement, there has to be something more in store for the band's future. The shifting winds will vindicate the fan who had never shied away from mocking the incurable visionary. It's clearly worth the wait. The first step of the reunion is the acoustic tour that Gary and Mark put together over 2005-06, in the wake of a hiatus agreed by mutual consent with Perlman, McCarthy and O'Reagan, so each could pursue other musical projects.

Speaking of Tim, he's the one who, surprisingly, becomes the first member of the Jayhawks to release a solo album, titled with little imagination Tim O'Reagan: a work that's perhaps overly subdued, tasteful and patchy, but with a few melodic ideas worth noting. The mood is self-effacing, laid-back, though here and there the dazzling songwriter of "Bottomless Cup" resurfaces (the Beatles-esque "River Bends", a seductive "Girl/World") or a decidedly more full-blooded, earthy streak emerges ("That's The Game"). A few good ideas do peek through, then, in an album that replicates the band's style without any particular sparks, closing on a celebration of niceness that, over time, becomes a bit tiresome.

2007 is Mark's turn, with the already-mentioned The Salvation Blues, while Gary's debut arrives a year later. Produced, surprisingly, by Chris Robinson, Vagabonds represents Louris at his most controlled: an electro-acoustic cut, piano to the fore, faint gospel and soul colourings and marked seventies echoes. If the result sounds intriguing on the excellent opener "True Blue", with its intoxicating melancholy, and if "Omaha Nights" stirs things up further thanks to its catchy bluegrass veins and a formidable ease, elsewhere (the carefully crafted "She Only Calls Me On Sunday", "To Die A Happy Man") the tone turns excessively composed – though still not bad – or inclined toward a sugary enthusiasm closely recalling the Crowes singer's sappiest songs ("We'll Get By"). Lovely is the domestic grace of the Lennon-esque "Black Grass", lovely the chiaroscuro of "D.C. Blues" (à-la "Summertime"), not to mention the restlessness of "I Wanna Get High".

What weakens an album that, for long stretches, gives off a vivid impression of peace, however, is that aestheticizing refinement of his, which casts over many of the tracks a faint shadow of mannerism, of ultimately counterproductive preciousness (in the track that lends the record its title, for instance).

Meanwhile, contacts between the two former bandleaders multiply. At the end of 2008 the fruit of their new collaboration hits stores, Ready For The Flood, jointly credited and also produced by Chris Robinson. The return of the two songwriters plays on the classicism of their shared past, so it's inevitable that Olson's expressive line should prevail, somewhere between echoes of the sparest, purely acoustic episodes of the early Jayhawks and, front and centre, the impeccable harmonies that made these two performers' fortune ("The Trap's Been Set"). The understated but proud tone evidently suits Mark, while Gary seems to struggle a little with the hide-and-seek and the languid tempos, too composed in his Dylan-esque pose on "Bicycle" or on the otherwise evocative "Black Eyes". Even so, the genuine freshness of the new songs keeps intact the charm of a truly timeless partnership. Certainly some passages, disciplined but a bit lukewarm, feel like business as usual and offer no risk beyond the pair's customary craft ("Turn Your Pretty Name Around", the bloodless but touching "My Gospel Song For You"). The duo caresses but doesn't know how (or perhaps doesn't even want) to sting, so one must settle for these courteous exchanges of whispers and delicacy on a guitar that's a touch too monochrome ("Saturday Morning On Sunday Street", in sepia tones).

The confiding tone is undoubtedly admirable, but the album doesn't warm the heart as much as one might have hoped, because what's missing, above all, is blood, and little can be done about it by the moderate country-blues exuberance of "Chamberlain, SD", the more rough-hewn streak of "Doves And Stones", the stripped-down desert-folk of an otherwise inspired "When The Wind Comes Up", or the knowing close of "Cotton Dress". The portrait that emerges, wordy beyond necessity though it is, is that of two seasoned storytellers, still convinced of their calling but a little short on bite.

The winding road of this quiet reconciliation reaches its culmination when, after the release of the double anthology Music From The North Country (half best-of, half rarities miscellany), in September 2011 the resurrected Jayhawks put out Mockingbird Time, much more than a mere reunion album given everything that preceded it. The lineup is the same as in 1995, with even Karen Grotberg answering the call, and this fact will push the album all the way to number 38 on the Billboard chart, paradoxically their best-ever placing. There's a moment, toward the end of "Tiny Arrows", where Karen's piano seems to invite the acoustic phrasing hinted at by Olson to dance. Louris's electric guitar answers at once, sparking off a brief dialogue of solos that is about as far from academic or precious as one can imagine. In the comfortable frugality of this almost private encounter lies the genuine, warmly intimate spirit of the band risen like a phoenix from the flames, while the ceaseless reuniting of the voices, the reassembling of simply magical choral harmonies, carries with it the fullest and most touching truth of a bond that has never faded. It takes a display of superb musical craftsmanship for the thread to be tied back together and for the gaps to become pale scars, reabsorbed until they vanish from sight. And Silence is the word that crops up most often, not by chance. Like a warning or an empty space, as if betraying the anxiety of truly confronting the silence of the last sixteen years.

Pressing the triangle for "Hide Your Colors" is like winding an old clock back into motion, or reopening a book to the exact paragraph where the reading had been left off. The classicism of Tomorrow The Green Grass has left an ear turned down on the page, a crease that won't fade. The same goes for the band's reflexes. Intact. Working almost as though they'd been oiled in readiness for the reopening. Mark settles into his own place with veteran's skill, dry and colourful class aplenty, long instrumental interludes and the same slightly rough voice of his most recent solo efforts. The introspective vein of the "salvation blues" sheds, however, the merciless cloak of bitterness to clothe itself in budding growth and serene nostalgia. The melancholy breath is warm to just the right degree, the hand steady enough to keep the melodies from slipping into the maudlin or the mawkish. Even so, the reunited bandmates don't coast, closing out both sides of the record with the excellent energy of a couple of slightly livelier episodes, never disowning the irrepressible leaning toward impure folk that has always been the trademark of their sound.

Between the broad country diversion of "Guilder Annie" and the sumptuous roots emphasis of "Black-eyed Susan", the more pronounced traditional streak of the second half leads straight back to the band's younger-days snapshots – the pleasant marginality of the Bunkhouse Lp – but doesn't undercut the substantial success of an album with an extremely high typicality quotient. No instant classic this time around, but full-bodied songs that rise with every listen like grandma's cake. Songs that it would be unreasonable to fault for anything beyond an excessive indulgence in showing their hand, or a gaze perhaps a little too stubbornly fixed on the past. Fairly venial as grievances go. Negligible, if on the other side of the scale we place even just the prodigious crescendo of "She Walks in So Many Ways" or the staggered vocal interweaving of "Cinnamon Love", a breathless chase across the endless prairie surrounding the church of Hollywood Town Hall. Now that, indeed, could be a fine opening line for anyone wanting to write that long-overdue book about them. Or better still, for an autobiographical novel by Mark Olson alone, called upon to serve up his own petites madeleines now that the search is finally over: "I open my eyes again, the snow has melted everywhere my gaze can reach. What's left is us, grown old, hidden inside a puddle."

The Fourth Season

From the outside, it looked like a genuine idyll for Mockingbird Time. A miraculous rapport in the studio, then replicated for over a year on an extensive new world tour. It would have been easy to predict a smooth, productive creative future for the Jayhawks, free of further turbulence, hidden internal battles or simmering resentments. The truth, however, is quite different, and the first hints of it emerge in 2012, when the band retreats into another open-ended hiatus from any shared activity, aside from the inevitable reissues of their back catalogue padded out with unreleased material. The break doesn't last too long, though, and the silence is broken by a series of new shows in 2014. Crisis averted, one might think, except that Mark Olson is not part of it, replaced by the returning Kraig Johnson. His absence could be put down to the new commitments of the former Creekdippers member, who in September releases Good-bye Lizelle, but it takes barely another year for the real story to come out. The backstory is revealed by Mark himself, who in an interview gets a few things off his chest and lets rip at his now-former bandmates, Gary in particular, describing a difficult forced cohabitation born of an urgent need for money to cover unexpected legal expenses (after his wife Ingunn was accused of being an illegal immigrant and sent back to Norway, barred from re-entering the United States for the following two years). Looking back on that troubled final couple of years together, Olson's account is merciless: he refers to Louris's drug dependency and to a tour "lived like a rock star", well beyond their actual means, which also explains his refusal to travel with the others on the band's bus, choosing instead to drive a rental car from stop to stop.

With this second poisonous account of the relationship between the two singers, and with the grim drug stories attached for the first time to Gary's name, one almost loses all remaining hope for the Jayhawks. Then, suddenly, a couple of new dispatches arrive. Two pieces of news, and the first one tastes distinctly good: a new album announced for spring 2016, not with the lineup that gave us the masterpieces of the early Nineties, but with the miserable, beautiful one that, with Sound Of Lies and Smile at the end of that same decade, proved it still had superb songs to offer. The second development is even more unexpected but no less precious: the return to action of Gary Louris himself, with a brand-new project alongside Django Haskins of Old Ceremony. Au Pair, as the duo is billed, came together almost by chance at the end of 2014. The two first met at a Big Star tribute show, both musicians having never hidden their devotion as fans (not to mention their long-running bond with legendary drummer Jody Stephens in Golden Smog), the idea of a wholly informal collaboration followed, and from there the discovery of kindred spirits capable of locking together perfectly.

Low budget stream of consciousness affair. That's how the two described the fruit of their collaboration, recorded together with Brian Haran (previously of service to Hiss Golden Messenger and Vetiver) with Renée Mendoza Haran of Ashrae Fax as the sole guest. The description, in fact, fits well: this is folk craftsmanship in threadbare packaging, intriguing in its rough-and-ready, dust-covered outfit, the same one occasionally worn by Wilco's lesser-known productions (from the guthrie-ana trilogy with Billy Bragg to the recent “Star Wars”). Of course, beyond the rubble, the flakes and the dirt, the refrain of “In Every Window” sounds like a classic Louris gem, the kind that takes no more than two listens to lodge itself in your head. Ambitions are kept fairly low here, with no excess, just a touch of disciplined roughness or some minimalist shading across the parched backdrops. And yet the charm that this pair of artists – masters of economy and genuine atmosphere, shaped by the best lessons of chiltonism and lennonism – manage to conjure from so little is genuinely admirable.

These tracks on One Armed Candy Bear might seem halting and fragile, destined to crumble on first listen, but they actually reveal an assuredness that makes them quite solid. Credit goes also to a songwriting approach that never indulges in sterile tricks, staying lean, sturdy in its fibre and luminous in its emotional range. The crooked, seemingly limping folk of Au Pair has the long breath and the clear gaze of the best of rural North America and its endless landscapes, much like in Simon Joyner or the Skygreen Leopards. The perspective is one filled with marginal wonder, that of seasoned contemplatives. The two voices bicker but end up harmonising, against a backdrop of modest, controlled flares or mirages that amplify to the extreme the seductions of beggar-balladeers (the Vagabonds so dear to Gary). What emerges is a collection of fleeting, elusive yet promising vignettes, a record that is at once intimate and wide open, an album of slow-paced atmospheres that nonetheless avoids the cramped, mournful allure of slowcore.

Better, much better than Gary's comparable outing with Olson, Ready For The Flood. This record feels far more alive, vibrant, pulsing, and the songs have the frankly unexpected weight of instant classics, a fragrance that is anything but adulterated or contrived. “Middle Distance” carries echoes of Roy Orbison and other ghosts of the inexhaustible Americana tradition (as well as of Louis Sullivan, personal idol of architect-on-leave Louris), with the curious enthusiasm and the dignity of the aforementioned Woody Guthrie, a lesson that every worthy standard-bearer of the alt-country scene seems to have absorbed to great effect (just think of Mark Olson, with or without his Creekdippers crew).

For his part, Haskins takes it upon himself to raise the classicist quotient, but once again this happens through an absolute economy of touch (the acoustic dialogue of “Make An Entrance” is gorgeous), following an inclination that never tips into posturing. The title track leans towards a domestic, nervy blues, all skin and bones but with a malign electric soul that expresses itself in subtle spirals of hot air. We're in the territory of the restless nocturnal desert of Howe Gelb's solo work (or of Hugo Race, too), complete with the corresponding dirty fascinations. Reverb-drenched and ringing, “Sullivan's Ghost” is another track that highlights the duo's genuinely American vein, with a series of vocal and electric intersections that almost mimic the chugging vitality of a speeding locomotive (and the correspondence with the author of “Bound For Glory” can be called complete).

The duo's explorations sting and warm the heart at once, speaking a musical idiom that one might foolishly believe dead and buried, but which fully deserves rediscovery. Certain stories, in fact, would not be the same if told through codes corrupted by modernity and its irredeemable banalities, the kind that almost always impoverish the picture. That is not the case with One Armed Candy Bear, thank goodness.

And a few months after the Au Pair debut, here come the Jayhawks again. Mark Olson has gone back to being nothing more than a distant memory, while Gary, clean and humbler than ever, arrives with Paging Mr. Proust, yet another chance to feel young again and give free rein to his musical instincts. From the Mockingbird Time experience, our man retains only the controlling hand on the technical side, choosing moreover to share production duties with two true giants of the console, the ever-enthusiastic Peter Buck and the far more meticulous Tucker Martine. It takes just a few seconds of the opening “Quiet Corners & Empty Spaces” to realise that the old roguish nostalgia is still there, just like the jangle of the guitars, the sparkling vocal harmonies or those melodious refrains capable of making you dream, lodged in memory after a single spin. The stylistic repositioning within the orbit of a genteel Eighties college-rock is evident, even if surprises keep shifting the frame of reference. “Lost The Summer”, for instance, bursts in ominously on the almost postcard-perfect idyll of the opener like a dark-pop window flung open onto unease. But there's no shortage of concessions to the band's own classicism either, to gentle, restrained ballads, to a modest but beautiful intimism capable of suddenly opening up radiant cracks of light. What emerges from “Lovers Of The Sun” is a certainty regarding the pen of the sixty-one-year-old Louris, who again looks to Gram Parsons or the Byrds with eyes misty with emotion. As for a little treat for die-hard fans from the early days, that would be “Isabel's Daughter”, a perfect alt-country intonation with a ready-made hook, one of those timeless songs that wouldn't have been out of place on the second side of Tomorrow The Green Grass.

And then there's “The Devil Is In Her Eyes”, another track that fearlessly reconnects with the band's past and thrills thanks to its small-scale yet deeply human epic quality, its limpid pride and admirable candour, the same clarity the group had in its veins when it recorded Hollywood Town Hall. Out of Gary's hat come yet more formidable songs like “Leaving The Monsters Behind”, a genuine easy-listening gem with a lethal, clockwork-precise refrain. It doesn't stray from the house's happy formula, the one that, since the days of Sound Of Lies, has married songwriting of pure sweetness and contemplation with an electric decorativeness of real substance, evidently an indispensable indulgence for the band's leader. Splitting the album right down the middle, on a record that already allows itself to quote Marcel Proust as well as John Keats, David Foster Wallace and John Updike, is “Ace”, almost a mantra with its swaying, recurring madness and its dark evocations, an unusual soliloquy by the frontman, crowded with ghosts and noisy drifts, perhaps exorcising that misguided drug dependency now finally put to rest.

Peter Buck's influence is felt loud and clear in the treatment of the guitars, in their newfound inclination towards shading or chiaroscuro swirls, in a sophisticated restlessness, washed in greyish tones, which also benefits from O'Reagan's rounded, impassive drumming. The Rickenbacker-style power-pop of “Comeback Kids”, reinvigorated, toned up and occasionally pumped with steroids, can't help but recall one of the last works by the Athens outfit, “Accelerate”, for its similar updating of old patterns and long-shelved sounds.

If Paging Mr. Proust is a contender to be the Minneapolis band's counterpart to that record, it's also because the parallel becomes irrefutable with “The Dust Of Long-Dead Stars”, a lively but retro-leaning episode taken to the point of parody, and a fairly enjoyable one at that, a playful aside that suits the record's overall balance well. Rounding out the catalogue of crossovers between these two great totemic beasts of Eighties and Nineties alternative rock, worth noting are the cameos by Buck himself, by the Wilsonian Mike Mills, and by the six-string of the ever-enduring Scott McCaughey.

The subtle synthetic smudges, meanwhile, point back to a controversial work like Smile, the most obvious reference point for a record that, rather than the kitschy fumbling of that era, prefers the melancholic, aestheticising contrasts branded R.E.M., applied to the band's usual infallible twang-pop formula. The Jayhawks of Paging Mr. Proust are perhaps the most twilight-hued version of the band yet, but the freshness of its references spares it from falling back on more artfully decadent clichés. The velvety finale is all about a subdued self-celebration that is hardly unwelcome: first with the bittersweet confidences of “Lies In Black & White”, then with the wonderful, rapturous close of “I'll Be Your Key”, yet another caress from an eternal seducer and that incredible voice of his: Gary Louris, unrivalled protagonist of one of the most compelling novels in alternative rock of the last thirty years, still far from writing its final word or settling into its quiet corner in the cabinet of musical memories.

And then, here we are in 2018. It may have arrived quietly, taking all the time it needed (a full thirty-three years into their career), but reaching a tenth studio album remains a milestone worthy of respect even for a veteran, long-respected band like the Jayhawks. After the thoroughly enjoyable twang-pop drift between R.E.M. and Wilco of Paging Mr. Proust, the Minneapolis outfit goes back to looking exclusively at its most classicist incarnation, though it doesn't shy away from offering its devoted fans a few intriguing surprises, starting with a couple of tracks entrusted to the voice of keyboardist Karen Grotberg (the ones given to drummer Tim O'Reagan's vocal outings are no longer newsworthy). Barely two years have passed since their last studio effort, though that stretch was lit up by their return to Sony (on the Legacy subsidiary), shaken by Kraig Johnson's departure, enriched by the double collaboration with Ray Davies on the albums rather fittingly titled “Americana”, and recently clouded by the sad news of the death of their first, original drummer, Norm Rogers, who lost his battle with a serious illness this past February.

The remarkably short turnaround required by the new Back Roads And Abandoned Motels is easily explained by the choice of frontman Gary Louris to give a second life to a batch of songs he had written over the past twelve years together with various artists, more or less well known, from the Dixie Chicks to Carrie Rodriguez to Jakob Dylan, songs that had already been released at the time, each under its own name. Only four are brand new, and just two (the closing tracks) are credited solely to the band leader, who once again serves as producer alongside Ed Ackerson and new member John Jackson, who contributes violin, mandolin and second guitar. The big single “Everybody Knows” is the most comfortable kind of homecoming, with the band sounding like it's playing from memory, warm and familiar, in its recycled alt-country outfit straight out of Tomorrow The Green Grass via Rainy Day Music: thoroughly familiar yet in its own way wondrous and essential. With “Bitter End”, Louris takes pleasure in letting all his vulnerability show through in a sweeping, traditionalist ballad that reaffirms the record's modest but thoroughly heartfelt trend, one that finds its clearest expressive touchstone in the well-received 2003 collection (listen too to the second, leaner single, “Backwards Women”, which marks our man's now-proverbial chase after the myth of Dylan, even if it settles for being a perfectly honourable piece of routine work). More measured and atmospheric, the American band manages to attune itself best to what its age would suggest, without any particular formal tampering but with grace and class still very much intact.

On the second side, the album grows increasingly inessential in its elusive intimism, shaped in the image of a frontman who sets aside the magnanimity of the first half – where he had indulged O'Reagan's lukewarm melancholy ("Gonna Be A Darkness") or Grotberg's more sparkling, Fleetwood Mac-esque flair (in the unusual opening of "Come Cryin' To Me", complete with a soulful horn section courtesy of David Ralicke) – to play instead at times absorbed in disillusioned contemplation, at times mildly sullen, occasionally even luminous. With the stripped-down ballad "Bird Never Flies", the Jayhawks return to favor a certain impressionistic touch that chimes well with other great, never-too-lucky names from the same scene (Richmond Fontaine above all).

Devoid of truly unforgettable songs yet meticulously crafted, crisp, honest and at peace with itself, much as has almost always been the case for records made by the Minnesota band, Back Roads And Abandoned Motels is an engaging album also because it is (pleasantly) unresolved, and quite faithful in sketching out the American microcosm so dear to the Jayhawks – that human marginality beautifully rendered by the elegant twilight of the closing "Leaving Detroit", and partly echoed too by the cover photo credited to a certain Wim Wenders (apparently and providentially back in "Paris, Texas" territory).

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