Son Volt returns in top form

As usual, Son Volt leader Jay Farrar barely said a word. Well, that's not entirely true. He did most of his talking, and spoke most eloquently, through the nearly two dozen songs he and his retooled St. Louis outfit presented to a packed Paradise on a miserably rainy Sunday night.

With some striking exceptions -- a relaxed-but-rugged "Automatic Society," which opened the 90-minute set; the jittery "Jumping Jack Flash"-inspired riff that drove "Satellite"; the knotty rocker "Afterglow 61" -- Son Volt's dark-hearted music mirrored the rain and windswept gloom outside. Farrar's songs were ruminations, sad-eyed looks at a vanishing America, the travails of the modern age, and a past both spiritual and rural that remains near to here, no matter how relentless the attempts to block it out with steel skyscrapers and concrete slabs.

It's little wonder Son Volt's restless, questing new album is titled "The Search," but in fact the cheap motels, border patrols, and Mexicali radio stations that populate new standouts "Highways and Cigarettes" and "Methamphetamine" are merely the latest markers for the themes of wanderlust and dislocation Farrar's explored since he led the proto-alt-country icon Uncle Tupelo. Even the unhurried pace and weathered parch of his vocals suggested winding roadways and driving detours -- Farrar stretched the vowels of his lyrics, lingering over their unfolding laments.

The songs from Sunday's "Search"-heavy set list sat, like seamless extensions of those preoccupations, alongside lovely older elegies such as "Windfall" and "Tear Stained Eye," both from Son Volt's 1995 classic alt-country masterwork, "Trace." Nearly matching those for sheer beauty was the new, abstractionist poem "Circadian Rhythm," gracefully illuminated by a ghostly guitar figure reminiscent of Neil Young's " Like a Hurricane." The blue-eyed soul blast of brass that stokes "The Picture" on disc was unfortunately missing, but Farrar compensated by strapping on a harmonica and acoustic guitar, returning the Mellencamp-esque tune to its heartland roots.

Although Farrar's songwriting has at times been as ponderous as it is pondering, the five-year layoff between Son Volt projects -- not to mention a sparkling new lineup that includes lead guitarist Brad Rice, bassist Andrew Duplantis, pianist Derry deBorja, and drummer Dave Bryson -- has clearly rejuvenated his search for, as he put it Sunday, "a truer sound."

Opener Jason Isbell, moonlighting from his day job as one of three singer-songwriters for Southern rockers the Drive-By Truckers, delivered a superbly crisp 45-minute set of powerful anthems, some mournful ("Dress Blues"), some majestic (DBT's "Decoration Day"). His band's ferociously exuberant, dead-on cover of Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak" was chiseled, diamond-riff perfection.