Somewhere between garage rock, punk and the Pogues, Uncle Tupelo were proud proponents of alt-country, a genre that, when they were operating in the late 80s and early 90s, was anathema to many of their contemporaries. On this reissue of their debut album, recorded when the band – Jeff Tweedy, Mike Heidorn and Jay Farrar – were all in their early 20s, the one thing that marks it out is how frantic it still sounds. Uncle Tupelo operated before Tweedy formed Wilco and Farrar assembled Son Volt, and you can hear the pair honing what would become much more sophisticated songwriting. Amid ballads such as Whiskey Bottle, there’s Graveyard Shift, which shifts between Pixiesesque loud and quiet parts; here it’s only Tweedy’s Illinois twang that marks them out from their grunge peers. The demos are, as you might expect, sketchy stuff, but therein lies the appeal of digging into the early work of any rock pioneer.
