The Unraveling, Drive-by Truckers

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After more than 20 years, the Drive-by Truckers continue to add powerful and poignant songs to their legendary catalogue. Following their 2016 album, American Band, a record that meticulously worked through election-year topics such as the NRA and white supremacy, The Unraveling paints similar political subjects without control. Released in January of 2020, The Unraveling emphasizes unbound fury and its nine tracks display this rage at full force.

Throughout their career, the Drive-by Truckers carried the difficult legacy of Southern American Gothic art. American Gothicism is a vital part of America’s history since its inception over a hundred years ago in the post Civil War South. After their defeat in the Civil War, the South didn’t just lose their slaves, land and men. Their entire identity and culture was blown to rubble, and from this rose the Gothic art movement. Artists began the painful and cynical process of healing these deep wounds. They lived in a shell of their former land, a tragic and scorched Earth inhabited by ghosts of the Antebellum South. Artists and authors such as William Faulkner confronted the horrors of Southern history with brutal honesty. It was the first step in healing the wounds of the Civil War, in accepting the failures and faults of their once mighty Southern identity. In 2020, over a hundred years since the end of the Civil War and the beginning of that healing process, the Drive-by Truckers continue Faulkner’s legacy of creating honest and politically charged Southern art.

The Truckers have used their music to address the complicated aspects of Southern identity. They built their careers as bar-burning rockers singing classic Southern tales of teens blacking out and listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, but they transitioned in the early 2000’s to a more reflective and intentional style of writing. On their most recognized album, 2001’s Southern Rock Opera, they offer the listener glimpses into the dark past of the South with songs about George Wallace and Civil Rights politics. However, with 2016’s American Band, the Drive-by Truckers shifted their focus away from the past and towards the present. On pinnacle tracks such as “Guns of Umpqua,” songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley reflected on today’s issues in America with measured anger and remorse. However, the anger they expressed in 2016 seems tame compared to the seething rage and disgust embodied by The Unraveling. The problems first addressed in American Band have continued in horrific ways, from child separation to white supremacy, and the Truckers are fed up. The Truckers are unapologetic in confronting these major societal issues while keeping their songwriting sharp and perspective clear.

The standout tracks “Babies in Cages” and “Thoughts and Prayers” are some of the Drive-by Truckers most powerful and stinging political statements to date. In the former, Cooley tells the story of waking up to see a news story of babies in ICE cages on the Mexican American border. He grapples with this disgusting truth, a reality that he cannot control and yet will define the country he loves. He expresses this in the most heartfelt way he can: apologizing to his children for bringing them into this world he can’t control yet will leave them to inherit. As the song’s tense, rattling backing track builds, progresses, Hood accepts that the country he loves is failing, and he goes after those responsible. He makes it simple, singing that while children are changing each other’s diapers, some must “answer for their sins.” It’s a forceful rebuttal of Trump’s America as well as the common-held notion that all country music is wave-flagging, gun-toting, republican anthems.

 In “Thoughts and Prayers,” the single off the record, Hood continues this compelling trajectory. He counters the upbeat instrumental backing with haunting scenes of elementary school shootings. He conjures TV news images we all wish to forget: elementary students screaming as they’re lined up on playgrounds and bloody bullet shells littering school hallways. He cries in despair as our government and society are unable to hold anyone accountable. All we can do is point fingers at each other while offering thoughts and prayers to those brutally murdered. 

 The track “21st Century USA'' is a classic Drive-by song as Patterson Hood travels through various unnamed small Southern towns. As the beat slowly pushes Hood on his journey, he sings of K-marts, disillusionment, and lingering hope. The verses are dark and painful, describing scenes of helpless workers losing their jobs overseas and resorting to prescription pills. However, among this darkness of “men working hard for not enough at best'' and “women working hard for even less,” he finds a glimmer of hope. In the chorus, the tragic subjects of his story plead for Hood to “hang on just a little bit longer and a savior will come our way.” Despite the odds being stacked against them, they maintain hope. This story doesn’t just apply to some specific towns in Hood’s home state of Alabama. It’s in “a town that aint nowhere near / just like every town everywhere.” Hood is speaking to the feeling of isolation felt in small towns across the United States as they fall behind the innovation of big cities. It’s a universal story that’s rarely broadcasted in mainstream urban media, a story shared by millions of rural Americans.  

 Although The Unraveling uses similar production, chords and arrangements as many other alt-country albums, it’s the continued superb songwriting and unfiltered emotion that set this record apart. Hood and the Truckers have tapped into the emotions that make us human, the anger, despair, and hope we all feel under the current social climate in the United States. While they have proved this ability time and time again since their debut in 1998, this record marks a powerful change in direction for the band. Perhaps they’ve gained the perspective or maturity to tackle these difficult issues, or maybe they’ve just had enough and needed to let it all out. When asked about his approach to the record, Hood said “I didn’t want to disguise it in flowery, poetic language.” The shocking fury of the record drives it forwards and makes it one of the most essential albums of the year so far. It is an honest and raw account of 21st century America.

WORDS BY JASPER NELSON, FEATURES EDITOR