HOFFSTACK PLAYLIST #15 - Son Volt, "Reality Winner"
What have you done/with these lyrics.
In the 1990s and aughts I was fairly obsessed with Son Volt, but for whatever reason I haven’t kept my eye on the ball on their work, or the work of Jay Farrar — the singer-songwriter and the center of the group. (I can’t find much of a difference between a Jay Farrar solo album and a Son Volt album, other than the label.)
In 2019 Farrar wrote a song “Reality Winner” and it appeared on their album Union. The live version linked above, which I prefer, was recorded on the road in 2020 and released the same year as a special download for hardcore fans on their website. It hit Spotify and the other streaming platforms in 2023. I heard it for the first time a few days ago and have played it approximately 700 times.
It is, indeed, a song about Reality Winner. It isn’t any clever play on her unusual name. The narrative simply recalls facts about the young woman who leaked NSA documents and went to jail. There is a complete lack of elegance to the lyrics, almost defiantly so. (“On this election interference/The intel report was plain and laid bare/For this job with the NSA/The intel was there, just couldn't look away".)
When Iron Maiden recorded songs like “Alexander the Great” and listed bullet points from an encyclopedia entry, there was at least an attempt to add some panache. That’s not really the case here.
And yet! Despite the stupidity (or, let’s be more kind, and just say strangeness) of the song’s lyrics, this track is further proof of what makes Son Volt one of the all time greats.
Farrar’s melodies really grab you by the throat. He writes the tunes you feel like you already know. This is not a diss. This is, in fact, the highest compliment there is. What did Llewyn Davis say? “If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it's a folk song.” There is an ache in Farrar’s best songs, and “Reality Winner,” has that in spades.
The other thing is the quality of his singing. Obviously, this is all subjective, but the man just has a gorgeous voice. It is strong and deep and sonorous and clear with a Midwestern weltschmerz I find devastating. This live recording of “Reality Winner” is a perfect example. I swoon, I stan.
But yes, there’s a cheat here on this cut. The woman’s name is Reality Winner. It’s her real name. If her name was Jennifer Kaplan, this song wouldn’t work. If her name was Jennifer Kaplan no one would remember this woman at all. Her name is fucking Reality Winner, that’s an insane name, so of course her story sticks in our head a little bit more.
When Farrar sings (croons? sobs? weeps?) “what have you done, Reality Winner? Reality Winner, what have you done?” there is a weird, otherworldly resonance. It might be an unearned resonance, but it is there nevertheless. A name like that is just too ripe for a songwriter to resist.
At the 4:09 mark, when Farrar switches into a different key (or something—I don’t really know a goddamn thing about music theory—he sings extra loud and goes a little high) it’s as powerful and emotional to me as any Rossini aria.
Incidentally, if you have access to the streaming platform Max you can and should watch the unusual film Reality, starring Sydney Sweeney. (She can actually act.) It’s very much a “formalist” exercise, but I think it is quite good. I wrote about it when it came out two years ago.