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**Uncle Tupelo - Still Feel Gone**
★★★★☆

In the grand narrative of American alternative rock, few albums have cast as long a shadow while remaining as criminally underheard as Uncle Tupelo's sophomore effort, *Still Feel Gone*. Released in 1991 on Rockville Records, this collection of wounded ballads and feedback-drenched laments arrived at a pivotal moment when the underground was about to explode overground, yet it sounds like it was recorded in some forgotten corner of the Midwest where time moves differently – which, in many ways, it was.

The trio of Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, and Mike Heidorn had already established their credentials with 1990's *No Depression*, a raw statement of intent that helped birth the alt-country movement. But where that debut wore its influences like battle scars, *Still Feel Gone* finds the band diving deeper into their own well of melancholy, emerging with something more cohesive and ultimately more devastating. This is the sound of young men grappling with isolation, disillusionment, and the peculiar American brand of existential drift that comes from growing up in small-town Illinois.

Musically, Uncle Tupelo continued to blur the lines between punk's urgency and country's emotional honesty, but *Still Feel Gone* reveals a band growing more comfortable with dynamics and space. The album opens with "Gun," a slow-burning meditation on violence and vulnerability that immediately establishes the record's contemplative mood. Farrar's vocals, always the more weathered of the two frontmen, carry the weight of someone far older than his twenty-three years, while the band's interplay suggests a telepathic understanding born of countless nights in dive bars and church basements.

The album's masterstroke is "Looking for a Way Out," a six-minute epic that builds from hushed verses to a cathartic chorus that feels like emotional release made audible. It's here that Uncle Tupelo's genius becomes clear – they understand that the most profound moments often come not from volume or velocity, but from the spaces between notes, the pause before the chorus hits, the way Tweedy's harmonies wrap around Farrar's lead like smoke around a streetlight.

"Still Be Around" serves as the album's most accessible moment, with a melody that burrows into your consciousness and stays there for days. Yet even this relatively straightforward rocker carries an undercurrent of unease, a sense that nothing good lasts forever. It's followed by "Watch Me Fall," which strips things back to acoustic guitar and raw emotion, Farrar's voice cracking with the strain of holding everything together.

The influence of Neil Young looms large throughout, particularly on the feedback-soaked "Punch Drunk," where the band lets loose with the kind of controlled chaos that Young perfected with Crazy Horse. But this isn't mere hero worship – Uncle Tupelo filters these influences through their own lens of Midwestern malaise, creating something that feels both timeless and utterly of its moment.

Producer Peter Buck of R.E.M. deserves credit for capturing the band's essence without overproducing it. The sound is warm but not polished, intimate but not claustrophobic. You can hear the room, the amplifiers breathing, the subtle interplay between Tweedy's bass and Heidorn's understated drumming. It's the kind of production that serves the songs rather than drawing attention to itself.

The album's legacy has only grown with time, particularly as both Farrar (Son Volt) and Tweedy (Wilco) went on to successful post-Uncle Tupelo careers. But listening to *Still Feel Gone* now, it's impossible not to wonder what might have been if this lineup had continued. There's a chemistry here, a shared vision that neither subsequent project quite recaptured.

In the context of 1991, with Nirvana about to change everything and alternative rock on the verge of mainstream acceptance, *Still Feel Gone* feels like a road not taken – a quieter, more introspective path that prioritized emotion over attitude, songs over statements. It's an album that rewards patience and repeated listening, revealing new depths with each encounter.

Today, *Still Feel Gone* stands as a crucial document of American alternative rock's formative years, a reminder that the most lasting music often comes from the margins rather than the center. It's the sound of a band at their creative peak, three musicians in perfect harmony creating something beautiful and broken and utterly essential.