POP MUSIC REVIEW : Son Volt’s Engaging but Not Deep at the Troubadour

With Son Volt’s show at the Troubadour on Monday, both of the former co-leaders of Uncle Tupelo--a Midwestern band that broke up before its following grew beyond avid cult--have now checked in here with albums and shows by their new groups.

The verdict? Uncle Tupelo’s downbeat, richly emotional, roots-flavored music was far more than the sum of its two hearts. Like the two panels on a pair of 3-D glasses, it took both Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy to bring out the picture’s full depth and color.

Like Tweedy’s band Wilco, Farrar’s Son Volt sounds engaging on the surface, but doesn’t go as deep as Uncle Tupelo. The current album “Trace” suggests that Farrar’s case of melancholia Americana was more severe than Tweedy’s, with its vignettes of a drifting soul looking for meaning and its hymn-like reassurances to the weary.

Farrar approaches his material in the understated way of a folk musician rather than the aggression of a rocker, and Son Volt’s mix of sweet and tart flavors comes out better on record than it did at the Troubadour. But a live show’s usual compensations--energy, spontaneity, personality--were in short supply Monday.

This looked like a band without much feel for the stage, and it didn’t show much of a strategy for conveying its musical virtues in a live setting. Vocally, Farrar has more room for expression at lower volume, and a segment featuring pedal steel and fiddle was an encouraging break from the lively but emotionally narrow guitar-crunching.