REVIEW: DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS – THE UNRAVELING (2020)

Published:

Back before Christmas, I was on Twitter and saw something that resonated with me: “It’s all bullshit,” It said. Borders. Walls. Currencies. Differing languages. Religions. Tribes. None of this shit matters. You only think it does. Because you’re programmed. Programmed to hate people you’ve never met, for reasons you don’t even understand.”

I’ve always believed that there is more that unites us than divides us, and the notion of “National Pride” seems ridiculous. How can I be proud – indeed why should I be proud? –  of something I had no control over, like where I was born.

I am English. Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley are not. What does that matter? Their music speaks to me like almost no other bands has in the last twenty years. The point to the opening of the review was to say that the Georgia based band write about the same things that concern me, thousands of miles away.

When I was 14 years old, in the midst of the glam rock and heavy metal I was listening to in 1989 (and still do, don’t worry) Del Amitri summed up the bleakness of existence, with the line: “And American businessmen snap up Van Gogh’s for the price of a Hospital wing”. As if to prove that the more things change, the more they stay the same (to borrow a lyric from a Cinderella track from roughly that period) in 2020, what explains the way we live better than this: “If Amazon can deliver salvation, I’ll order it up on my phone…..”

That glorious line is from “21st Century USA” but it represents 21st century everywhere, just like the best always have done, and these boys – whatever line up they have had over the years – are amongst the very, very best.

It’s been well over three years since their last album, and I hadn’t realised that amounted to the longest break in their careers. It seems that Hood and Cooley, the originals had been struggling with writer’s block. Like, they didn’t know how to articulate their feelings on their lives, your lives, my life.

So what they did, was get properly personal. They’ve always told stories, and they still do, but these nine, I’d argue that this is the most close to home they’ve ever been.

It starts in rather understated fashion. Piano, metronomic on “Rosemary With A Bible and A Gun” and its small town feel is blown away with “Armageddon’s Back In Town” and, really, if you could bottle the classic DBT sound, its here. Rock n roll, but with a point, Americana but with a screeching guitar line, it is marvellous, and that’s without even thinking about the superb lyrics – indeed its best to assume that the lyrics are wonderful throughout (“I flew to Cincinnati in the rain, I am standing here soaking wet and the weatherman’s to blame” particularly impressive here as we all look to make it someone else’s fault).

“Slow Ride Argument” is one of the ones Cooley sings. They’re always so interesting and always make you think. This one is no different, but the overt country stylings of “Thoughts And Prayers” is one of Hood’s most vitriolic attacks. “You can shove it up your ass, with your useless thoughts and prayers”, he almost spits contemptuously here, as he deals with (I assume) the gun culture back home.

You could spot most of them as being DBT songs a mile off, but “Heroin Again” plays with the formula. A massive bass groove from Matt Patton frames a lament on those who waste their lives in the grip of the drug.

If that one jars, then the electro, almost funky loops of “Babies In Cages” really grabs you. How can we live in a world where we do this to innocent little ones? And its clear Hood agrees. “I am sorry to my children, I am sorry [for] what they see, and I am sorry for the world they’ll inherit from me” is perhaps the starkest condemnation of the current world that is here.

MC does his thing again, brilliantly on the quirky “Grievance Merchants” and they wrap it up with one that seems to amount to their state of the union address. The damn near nine minute long “Awaiting Resurrection” builds just incredibly, laying waste to everything around us, and crucially containing a guitar line, that (I don’t know, I am probably way off) seems to suggest that the world will be alright as long as we’ve got music.

Whatever, it’s all unravelling, and “The Unravelling” is absolutely out in front as the album of the year so far. It might well end up being the best of 2020 too. It’ll take something mighty to beat it for sure. Welcome back, and we need The Drive By Truckers more than ever, right now. Wherever you are in this world.

Rating 10/10

Previous article
Next article

More From Author

spot_img

Popular Posts

Latest Gig Reviews

Latest Music Reviews

spot_img

Band Of The Day