Album of the Week: Drive-By Truckers, 'American Band'
by Jill Riley
October 03, 2016
The Drive-By Truckers are an outspoken Southern band with progressive ideas, and with this record, they show they're not afraid to to let you know their feelings about inequality, racism, gun violence and police brutality. The new album, American Band, is being called their most political album to date; it's timely and most certainly a protest record.
The Truckers' main songwriters, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, have channeled their frustration with the social and political climate of 2016 and it turned it into an album full of songs that take an honest and meaningful look at a divided country. I imagine as a songwriter, you can choose a couple different approaches to the current situation in this country: either write a feel-good rock record as a distraction; or dive in head-first and be honest about your views on politics and human rights, using your voice to comment on your values. The Drive-By Truckers have chosen the latter; the lyrics are very straightforward as they use this record as an outlet to tell you they're pissed off about the current state of affairs, as songs like "Surrender Under Protest" and "What It Means" illustrate.
During a recent in-studio performance and interview at The Current, both Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley expressed how, as Southerners, they don't identify with the voice of the Trump-voters in their neck of the woods. Patterson Hood told The Current, "When you think about it, if you look at our band, just on a purely demographic scale, we basically look like the Trump-voter demographic: I am a white, middle-aged, Southern male, college dropout, but they're not speaking for me."
This is not the first time the Drive-By Truckers have taken a stand or expressed their left-leaning political views. But because the record feels so timely and in the moment, I think they are going to make a huge impact with the album's lyrical content and its somber tone.
Just look at the album's cover: it's an American flag at half-mast. That's a pretty powerful image to illustrate the tone of the new Drive-By Truckers album, American Band.
Drive-By Truckers - official site