Uncle Tupelo was never really a political band, but the group had a socially conscious side. Like most of their alt-country peers, the influential trio (and later quintet) often romanticized a working class sensibility they absorbed in their hometown, the St. Louis exurb of Belleville, Ill. Singers Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy trafficked in a volatile mix of gnashing punk and Appalachian-style acoustic music on songs exploring the restless, sometimes hopeless frustration of life in crumbling Rust Belt towns that once comprised the American industrial heartland. By the time Farrar’s brief partnership with Tweedy split into Son Volt and Wilco, respectively, it had yielded four albums between 1990-93, filled with references to dead ends, disillusionment, and the kind of solace that beckons from barroom doors.
Yet just as Farrar and Tweedy found latter-day parallels in the venerable Folkways compilations that helped to inspire them, some of Uncle Tupelo’s songs sound like they were foreshadowing current events. Their lyrics made reference to economic inequality, social injustice, environmental degradation, and the easy temptations of apathy and disengagement—recurring themes in the headlines of 2016.
Though Uncle Tupelo’s style evolved from album to album, and the lyrical emphasis changed a bit, the band’s music is of a piece. No Depression in 1990 revolved around meaningless labor and empty wallets. Songs on the follow-up, 1991’s underrated Still Feel Gone, are full of yearning for a sense of place, be it physical, economic, even romantic (“My heart, it was a gun/But it's unloaded now,” Tweedy sings on “Gun”). The band’s third album, March 16-20, 1992, features their most overt social commentary, on acoustic songs drawn most directly from the protest-folk tradition. Their final album, 1993’s Anodyne, seems to hint at the deteriorating relationship between Farrar and Tweedy on songs with a tone of weariness and resignation.
Here are seven times Uncle Tupelo songs predicted the political mess we’re currently in.
“Graveyard Shift”
The first song on No Depression sets a definitive tone, with a bleak picture of life in a place where opportunity is scarce for most people, and not just on the local level. “Some say a land of paradise/Some say a land of pain,” Farrar sings, during a lull between savage, churning guitar riffs. “Well which side are you looking from/Some people have it all and some have all to gain.” Sounds like something Bernie Sanders could have used in a stump speech, or an echo of the Occupy Wall Street ethos.
“Whiskey Bottle”
The bottle in this searing No Depression track serves as a refuge, from “one too many faces with dollar-sign smiles” and “the sound of people chasing money and money getting away”—a fairly pointed description of the always-be-closing mentality that looms behind the American dream. Then there’s this bit: “In between the dirt and disgust there must be/Some air to breathe and something to believe/Liquor and guns, the sign says quite plain/Somehow life goes on in a place so insane.”
“Train”
Military conscription in the U.S. ended in 1973, but sending young men (and nowadays women) to fight in wars didn’t: close to 7,000 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan (along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans), and there are rumblings in some corners about putting U.S. boots on the ground to fight ISIS in Syria. Joining the military has long served as a way out for young people who have few other opportunities; that doesn’t seem to have escaped Tweedy’s notice on this No Depression tune, as he watches a freight train loaded with war materiel pass by. “I’m 21/And I’m scared as hell/I quit school/I was healthy as a horse,” he sings over a galloping riff. “Because of all that/I’ll be the first one to die in a war.”
“Sauget Wind”
Named for a southern Illinois town that was first incorporated as Monsanto by the agrochemical company of the same name, this non-album single from 1992 doesn’t beat around the bush. “They’re poisoning the air/For personal wealth,” Farrar sings. After a crashing musical interlude, he picks up where he left off, singing, “An industrial wind blows from the west/It’ll burn out your eyes and suck out your breath.” Monsanto stopped producing PCBs in Sauget when the chlorine compound was banned in the late ’70s, but the company is now a target of criticism for developing, and patenting, genetically modified seeds for crops.
“Grindstone”
“Handcuffs hurt worse when you’ve done nothing wrong,” Farrar sings on the opening track from March 16-20, 1992. He’s always had a fondness for lyrical opacity, but “Grindstone” seems to be about getting pushed around by the powers that be, for no other reason than that they have power. “Fed up, lost and run down/Nowhere to hold on,” he sings. “Tired of ‘Take your place at the end, son’/We'll get to you one by one.” Whether he’s referring to the broad idea of justice, or painting a Depression-era scene of frustration with a lack of work (or dignity) for the working class, there are unmistakable parallels with racial profiling and the police violence taking place in America now, even if the words are coming from a middle-class white guy who wrote them more than two decades ago.
“Criminals”
Perhaps the most explicitly political tune the band ever wrote, this song from March 16-20, 1992 makes reference to George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign promise of a “kinder and gentler” America. But there’s a startling resonance to more recent events in lyrics questioning the trustworthiness of the justice system, the media and, not least, the people who seek to lead us. “We’ve got shackles to keep the laws/Made by men who bought and sold themselves,” Farrar sings with indignation. “With not a prayer to keep their powers at bay/They want us kinder and gentler at their feet.” Burn.
“We’ve Been Had”
At least as much a cynical take on the music business as anything else, Tweedy still lands a glancing shot at the political class on this twangy rocker from Anodyne, singing, “Republicans and Democrats can't give you the facts/Your parents won't tell you 'til you're grown/Every star that shines in the back of your mind/Is just waiting for its cover to be blown.” Even if one party or the other could give you the facts, the increasingly entrenched ideological divide in America during this election cycle makes it an open question whether the opposing side would bother to listen.