The Borderline is like a steam oven tonight. It's 30 degress outside and it must be another 10 down here. The expectant crowd is virtually swimming in perspiration. But Jay Farrar, godfather to the current alt.country scene via his work with Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt, breaks sweat only intermittently.
Like his former bandmate, Jeff Tweedy, Farrar has been deviating from the alt.country blueprint of late. Though no 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot' in terms of experimentalism, last year's 'Sebastopol' LP saw the Illinois singer branching out into psychedelic popscapes backed by such luminaries as Gillian Welch, Kelly Joe Phelps and - man of the moment - Steve Drozd of The Flaming Lips. The resulting project was widely acclaimed as the best of his career.
Yet, pared down to an acoustic guitar and Mark Spencer's freestyle electric backing, the subtleties that made Sebastopol such an interesting proposition loses something in translation. In fact, performed as a duo it sounds formulaic. Spencer's relentless Neil Young-style soloing played over the platform of Farrar's four chords eventually merges into one endless number. His voice, a countrified approximation of Michael Stipe on record, is on autopilot, and the sense of motions being gone through is compounded by his lack of onstage charisma. It's seven numbers in before he even acknowledges our presence and the night takes on all the excitement of a practice session; fine if you're a diehard fan - of which, admittedly, there are plenty here - but trying for the rest of us dying through heat exhaustion.
The languor is so overwhelming that when Farrar blows his harmonica on 'Damn Shame' it might well have been a synthesised bagpipe. At least it breaks out of the slumber, and the song sounds all the better for it - breaking out of the generic minor key structure. When they break into the power pop of 'Voodoo Candle' soon afterwards, all chiming guitars and harmonious vocals, it's another tantalising glimpse of what might have been. If only Farrar could find his way out of second gear more often.
The duo encore with 'Windfall', possibly Son Volt's finest moment with its refrain of "May the wind blow your troubles away". It's real tears-in-your-beer stuff - grown men sing along and someone shouts out Jay we love you. Then someone yells Jeff Tweedy's a wanker, before Farrar finishes with a brilliant and maniacal version of George Harrison's 'Love To You' - easily the best thing he's played all night.
The crowd lap it up; he shuffles off without a word and the spell is broken again.
