{"id":914,"date":"2016-09-30T15:45:42","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T19:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/?p=914"},"modified":"2016-11-08T23:48:39","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T04:48:39","slug":"new-release-roundup-drive-by-truckers-bob-weir-luke-winslow-king-the-wytches-mike-destefano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2016\/09\/30\/new-release-roundup-drive-by-truckers-bob-weir-luke-winslow-king-the-wytches-mike-destefano\/","title":{"rendered":"New Release Roundup – Drive-By Truckers, Bob Weir, Luke Winslow-King, The Wytches, Mike DeStefano"},"content":{"rendered":"

MUSIC<\/strong>
\n1. Drive-By Truckers<\/a> \u2013 American Band<\/em>
\nThe Drive-By Truckers may be the definitive American band. Others may have a rootsy sound, or play inspired rock and roll. Some may speak to the politics of the times. But no one puts it together like the Truckers, and that\u2019s especially true on the new album, American Band<\/em>, their most explicitly and consistently political since Southern Rock Opera<\/em><\/a>. Singer\/guitarist\/songwriter Patterson Hood promised as much in June when the band released the Mike Cooley-penned \u201cSurrender Under Protest,\u201d<\/a> Cooley\u2019s reaction to the Confederate flag being taken down over the South Carolina State House after nine people were gunned down in a black church in the summer of 2015. \u201cCompelled but not defeated, surrender under protest if you must,\u201d sang Cooley, speaking to those who would keep the flag flying out of a sense of tradition. Hood wrote on the band\u2019s Web site that though the band has never been shy to write about politics, it has mostly addressed historic issues or wrapped it in the artifice of a story. \u201cThis time out,\u201d he wrote, \u201cthere are no such diversions as these songs are mostly set front and center in the current political arena with songs dealing with our racial and cultural divisions, gun violence, mass shootings and political assholery.\u201d <\/p>\n

This album might be dealing in the present, but Cooley and Patterson are still writing compelling fables with flawed characters. They come out swinging, sonically and lyrically, on Cooley\u2019s \u201cRamon Casiano,\u201d the story of a crooked border agent involved in a killing as a boy. It\u2019s some of Cooley\u2019s best songwriting, and typical of the more pointed lyrics on the album. <\/p>\n

He had the makings of a leader
\nOf a certain kind of men
\nWho feel the world\u2019s against them
\nOut to get them if it cam
\nMen whose fingers pull their triggers
\nMen who would rather fight than win
\nUnited in a revolution
\nLike in mind and like in skin<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hood\u2019s contributions often find him longing for a time or place beyond the turmoil of modern violence. In \u201cGuns of Umpqua,\u201d he addresses the shootings that killed a professor and eight students at a community college in Oregon in 2015. His narrator is trying to escape the memory of witnesses the shootings, which he recounts in some detail. “We\u2019re all standing in the shadows of our noblest intentions of something more\/Than being shot in a classroom in Oregon,\u201d sings Hood. The song ends on the refrain, \u201cHeaven\u2019s calling my name from the hallway outside the door.\u201d Hood\u2019s at his most ferociously political on \u201cWhat It Means,\u201d addressing killing and rioting in Ferguson, Missouri and the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. \u201cI mean Barack Obama won and you can choose where to eat,\u201d he sings, \u201cbut you don\u2019t see too many white kids lying bleeding on the street.\u201d <\/p>\n

Musically, the band has settled into their sound with this line-up, their second album with a two-guitar attack with Cooley and Hood, Jay Gonzales on keys and sometimes guitar, and Matt Patton and Brad Morgan laying down bass and drums. It\u2019s a muscular variation of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on the more rock and roll tunes, which is sort of a base configuration they can dip in and out of for ballads like \u201cOnce They Banned Imagine\u201d or the slinky boogie of \u201cKinky Hypocrite.\u201d <\/p>\n

Not every song on American Band is identifiable as headline news, but they all speak to the times. There\u2019s the melancholy of Hood\u2019s \u201cSun Don\u2019t Shine,\u201d about being happy when it gets cold outside and there\u2019s \u201ca little rain to make the roses bloom.\u201d Even that mentions a love that will last \u201ctill the markets crash and smoke and ash is left of these beautiful trees.\u201d That\u2019s echoed in Cooley\u2019s \u201cFilthy and Fried\u201d when he sings, \u201cEveryone claims that the times are a changing as theirs pass them by\/And everyone\u2019s right.\u201d The closing tune isn\u2019t explicitly about Prince dying, but it\u2019s not hard to imagine. \u201cSome asswipe on TV said that you should be ashamed\/For your cowardice in facing down your flaws\/I\u2019m not sure what makes me sadder, all that talent up in flames\/Or the lack of understanding that it wrought.\u201d And if there\u2019s a theme that ties it all together, it\u2019s more emotional than political. \u201cAll this freight can put you six feet in the ground\/Nothing left to do but try to keep it all together\/Better off without the baggage I carry around.\u201d
\n