Son Volt CD cover art

Jay Farrar, the brain behind alt-country rockers Son Volt, doesn’t much care about what the media is saying about his band’s new CD, “American Central Dust.”

Never mind that the early reviews point to the record being among the most brilliant of Son Volt’s career.

“I try not to pay attention,” Farrar says. “There’s always going to be someone who likes it and someone who doesn’t. I try to stay focused on the task at hand, writing and recording and taking the songs on the road.”

Some are comparing “American Central Dust” with the release considered Son Volt’s most triumphant: 1995’s Americana classic, “Trace.”

“Perhaps they do share a fundamental aesthetic,” says Farrar, who lives in St. Louis. “But I don’t want to call it ‘Americana,’ though it has ‘American’ in the title. … I don’t like to be put in a box, so I don’t have a name for what I do.”

The band wrote the songs last summer and recorded them last fall.

Son Volt’s current lineup includes new members Mark Spencer (keyboards, pedal steel, lap steel) and Chris Masterson (guitar), adding to a wider variety of sounds. The band also includes Dave Bryson (drums) and Andrew Duplantis (bass).

“I think the approach going into this recording was that this record would be more focused,” Farrar says. “On the previous record, there were so many songs with different arrangements.”

Most of the songs started with a central theme, allowing for a more linear style of writing, he says.

Such was the case on “Sultana,” about a steamboat that was destroyed in a Mississippi River explosion in 1865.

“That name struck me as a sadly powerful name,” Farrar says. “More people lost their lives on the Sultana than the Titanic, but it happened a month after (President Abraham) Lincoln was assassinated, so there wasn’t a lot of coverage. People were tired of bad news.”

“Cocaine and Ashes” is Farrar’s homage to Keith Richards and, in a way, to his own father, Jim “Pops” Farrar. It’s based on Richards saying that he mixed cocaine with his father’s ashes, which the Rolling Stones guitarist later admitted was a joke.

“I was moved by that,” Farrar says. “My father passed away seven years ago, so it put me in the same mind-set.”

“American Central Dust” is Son Volt’s first release on its new label, Rounder Records. (Farrar still has his own label, Transmit Sound, for his solo recordings.)

“It was a mutual decision with Sony Legacy to move on,” he says of the label that released Son Volt’s fine “Okemah and the Melody of Riot” in 2005.

With a large label like Sony, Farrar says, “the art part can lose out to the commerce part.” He says Rounder “has shown a long-term commitment to our ideals, and they seem like a good fit.”

Son Volt’s latest effort, coincidentally, is coming on the heels of the new Wilco record, “Wilco (The Album).” Farrar and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy were once in the Belleville-based alt-country band Uncle Tupelo.

“This is the third time this has happened,” Farrar says of the similar release dates. “It’s getting to be kind of routine.”

“American Central Dust” • In stores Tuesday • Son Volt is expected to perform in St. Louis in October