Somerville Theater, Somerville, Mass., Sept. 30, 1998

Chrome-trim dashboards and A.M. radio knobs. Rolled-down windows and endless roads illuminated only by headlights. And driving on them, alone, with nothing but that tinny radio and half-remembered conversations drifting through your head for company. This is the lonely yet blue-denim familiar world of Son Volt, a world of barren skies and tear-stained eyes, where home is either somewhere you're leaving behind or hoping to find, but you're never sure which.

Funny thing is, for the band's notoriously devoted followers, home is wherever Son Volt happen to be performing at the moment. And for the attentive -- no, worshipful -- audience that flocked to (and sold out) the old, tastefully ornate Somerville Theatre Wednesday evening, home for two-plus hours was a seat in a rainy suburb of Boston. Son Volt leader Jay Farrar never asked for this, and he certainly didn't expect it when he formed Son Volt from the clay of his first band, Uncle Tupelo, four years ago. All one had to do to realize this, during his band's semi-unplugged, sitting-down set, was to take one look at the serious but slightly sheepish expression on his face, his furtive eyes that barely rested on the sight of applause before turning away and toward the next song.

After all this time, despite a pair of critically lauded albums and an adoring audience that feels like it's in on a secret -- much in the same way that Bruce Springsteen's followers felt they were part of something special in the early Seventies -- Farrar still seems surprised by the reaction he gets. But he does his best to accommodate, hoping, as he's said so many times, that the songs will speak for themselves. The nearly two-dozen songs Son Volt offered on this night spoke with measured eloquence and a casual authority and power that was undiminished despite the low-key, mostly acoustic setting. The band is touring in support of its new, soon-to-be-released third album Wide Swing Tremolo, but perhaps because that disc won't be in stores until next week, they fell back on many older favorites from Trace and Straightaways, the group's first and second albums, respectively.

Farrar's voice, which always sounds much older than he is, was an elegant, even-keeled anchor in the swaying sea of Dave Boquist's lilting lap steel guitar, his brother Jim Boquist's pulsing bass, and Uncle Tupelo alum Mike Heidorn's percussion. With a stage backdrop as spare as the songs themselves -- a couple of living-room lamps, a few chairs, a table -- there was nothing to distract from stark powerhouse signatures like "Ten Second News" and "No More Parades." The occasional plugged-in bursts of "Caryatid Easy" and "Cemetery Savior" sounded better than ever given the contrast.

What's either remarkable or predictable about Son Volt (depending, of course, upon whether you're a fan or not) is how new numbers like "Blind Hope" and "Flow" sounded just as burnished, just as lived-in, as their road-tested material. Again and again, as Farrar strummed an acoustic guitar and wrapped his consoling baritone around sentiments that signaled hope or resignation or time unraveling, the band embellished each lyric with just the right brush stroke of lap steel, ride cymbal or fiddle. During those moments you got the feeling that Son Volt were no longer on a journey to somewhere, but that home was right here. That they had arrived.

JONATHAN PERRY