The Drive-by Truckers New Album ‘The Unravelling’ Is Their Most Meaningful Yet

Madeline Christy reviews new album The Unravelling by the Drive-by Truckers, including her top picks.

Yesterday saw the release of the 12th studio album,The Unraveling, by the Drive-by Truckers; who are digging up the white picket fence on the ‘American Dream’ chimaera. Putting the Trump presidency under the knife, the band address issued around gun violence, border control and the opioid crisis. 

The opening track, ‘Rosemary with a Bible and a Gun’, casts a gloomy fog over the conflicting images of Christianity and brutality. Even the snare in the track carries a sense of restraint; mixed with a low pass filter which gives it that enclosed environmental effect, while the electric guitar is sodden in spacey delay, blurring a multitude of colourful instrumentation to create a quintessential dystopia. 

When travelling to ‘Armageddon’s back in town’ we find ourselves seated at an ‘Alice In Wonderland’-like political tea party, trying to ‘tell the darkness from the flame’ and ‘the rabbit from the hat’.  The song helps to speed up the movement of the album with a frenetic tempo and feverish guitars. 

While the third track ‘slow ride argument’ fails to compete with the other songs on the album, it does provide a fun intermission before diving into the heavy ‘Thoughts and Prayers’. In the copper age of gun control, the ‘carnage’ of school shootings in America had risen above the solution of thoughts and prayers. The horrific image of ‘bloody ground[s]’ and the ‘counting up the casualties’ only emits one response from ‘Generation Lockdown’; ‘Stick it up your ass with your useless thoughts and prayers’. While the band return to a clean, country sound, the almost bright mix of the track supports the modern mundane reaction to this unnatural quotidian epidemic. 

The band slow down for ‘21st century USA’. Inspired by a visit to ‘a town that’s named for razor blades’, Gillette, Wyoming; Hood sings of looking behind the curtain of the American dream. ‘All American but Chinese made/ folks working hard for shrinking pay.’ Delivering the message in such a lounge-like style, Hood directs the song at Americans totalitarianism, even going as far as consorting the life of the average Joe to George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-four:a novel’; ‘with big brother watching me always/ why must I always feel so alone’. This is probably one of the few country songs that I’ve come across that tackle emotional detachment in contrast to most current country hits (such as Sam Hunt’s ‘Kinfolk’, which implies that most American towns are close knit and nurturing). 

A throbbing bass line belonging to ‘Heroin Again’  introduces an element of funk into a merely country based record. The swampy disposition will put you in the shoes of such a Paludal visitor; such poverty and lack of resources to reach ambition lead to addiction, which only contributes to further poverty. 

‘Babies In Cages’ is a contemporary blues ballad of the Mexican border. The gothic country other and mix of contemporary philosophy creates a distorted new meaning to ‘this ain’t the country that our granddads fought for us to be’ and questions the true elucidation of origin. 

Based upon the events of the Unite the Right rally of 2017, guitarist Mike Cooley wrote ‘Grievance Merchants’ after learning his family’s babysitter’s best friend had been murdered in a light rail train: the progressive rock sound causes friction against the unprogressive equally storyline , not only in the larger, full picture that is of America, but even in the faces of your small town. Cooley highlights the distance of addressing such concerns that hit so close to home with battle like drums and outlaw country guitars. 

The album closes with a risky eight minute long song entitled ‘Awaiting Resurrection’, Hood’s vocals creep through the murky mix of howling guitars and shaking drums. Are we awaiting a false resurrection? ‘We’re just standing/ watching greatness fade into darkness.’ It can be quite disheartening to think that the dystopian storyline of the album is not fictional shrinking I’d a product of Trump’s kakotopia. However, what this band HAS achieved is delivering such a dark mattered story, with a vivid and uptempo soundtrack which has given this album the ability to actually connect with audiences and reach a new generation of voters. 

 

8/10

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Editor’s Picks

21st century USA 

Babies In Cages 

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