For the uninitiated: Uncle Tupelo began life in the mid-eighties when school friends, Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, and Mike Heidorn discovered a mutual love of country music and rock and subsequently formed a band that - put simply - pasted the two together.
That band went on to rewrite the rules of country music, daring to impregnate traditional small town folk with the sound of suburban punk and guitar-laden rock.
Today artists of Ryan Adams, Lucinda Williams and Beck's stature are being credited with bringing this genre into the mainstream. But there's little disagreement that Uncle Tupelo supplied the foundations upon which such artists have built their reputations.
When you consider they never sold any more than 50,000 of any of their four albums that's a colossal achievement.
Of course, anyone who's even heard anything about the band will know that all didn't end well. In 1994 co-songwriter and vocalist, Jay Farrar, upped and unexpectedly left, leaving Uncle Tupelo with little choice but to call it a day. But from the carcass of Uncle Tupelo grew two new bands: Jeff Tweedy forming Wilco with most of the UT set-up; while Jay Farrar went on to create Son Volt. Both accomplished and much loved offshoots of that original "school band."
'89/93: An Anthology' is a celebration of what happened between Uncle Tupelo's creation and their sudden and messy demise. Beginning with the band's early ode to small town Illinois, 'No Depression', the album continues to jostle between softened lullaby and anthemic punk guitar noise, all of which are drawn together in the cohesion of despair to be found in Farrar and Tweedy's lyrics.
'Graveyard Shift' steps up the pace with an angry assault on the everyday routine of life providing a rallying cry for America's intellectual youth of steadfast persuasion. And it's irresistibly affecting.
It's a shame though, when presented with such no-compromise defiance, that this compilation has the distinct scent of a record company cashing in.
With re-mastered versions of all four of the band's previous albums to be released, complete with bonus tracks, later this year this record seems surplus to requirements. Of course, a couple of sweetening extra rarities have been added to entice the more dedicated fan to part with their cash - an acoustic cover of the stooges 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' and the previously unreleased demo of 'Outdone' being the big draws - but it's still doubtful whether this is justification enough for the record's repetition elsewhere.
Still, as an introduction to the sound of a band who've become the benchmark against which today's alt-country stars are inevitably measured it can hardly be faulted. It may sound technically dated in places, but lyrically Tweedy and Farrar are still years ahead of the "competition".
