Uncle Tupelo: No Depression Legacy Edition

IN THE SUMMER OF 1990, somewhere in the puzzling chasm between lipstick-smeared hair-metal excess and flannel-clad grunge irony, Uncle Tupelo arrived on the scene like a record scratch. Their now-legendary debut, No Depression, was an album that cemented a burgeoning underground movement and eventually lent its name to a damn fine little journal of Americana music. Its sound was refreshingly unvarnished, the band striving for passion over perfection, authenticity over hip cachet. Through their ritual emulation of the ancient, they somehow manifested something entirely new — the deep waters of the American musical tradition filtered through a decade-and-a-half of jangling power pop and no-frills punk abandon, all colored by a stubborn attempt to transcend that mild yet insistent Gen-X malaise.