Artist: Patterson Hood
Album: Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance
Bitrate: 225kbps avg
Quality: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.98.4 / -V0 / 44.100Khz
Label: ATO Records
Genre: Rock
Size: 75.50 megs
PlayTime: 0h 44min 37sec total
Rip Date: 2012-09-08
Store Date: 2012-09-11
Track List:
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01. 12:01 3:14
02. Leaving Time 3:31
03. Disappear 3:19
04. Better Off Without 2:39
05. (Untold Pretties) 3:44
06. After The Damage 4:34
07. Better Than The Truth 3:04
08. Betty Ford 3:00
09. Depression Era 3:52
10. Heat Lightning Rumbles In The 4:17
Distance
11. Come Back Little Star 5:01
12. 15 Days (Leaving Time Again) 4:22
Release Notes:
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Patterson Hood has always chronicled other peopleÆs lives with a clear and
unblinking eye. But never has he told his own story with equal candor and
breadth.
Until now.
One of the prime scribes behind the literate Southern rock band the Drive By
Truckers, Hood has made a career out of spinning sad narratives, peopled with
drunks, murderers, deadbeat dads and doomed rockers. (The groupÆs best-known
work is a rock opera about the band Lynyrd Skynyrd.)
For his third and latest solo album, Patterson takes an equally tough view of
two periods in his own life. First: the early Æ90s, when he was divorced,
band-less and suicidal. Second: the present, where he vaccilates between what he
describes in the title track as ôanguish and acceptance.ö
The music takes an equally hard turn from the past. Eschewing the TruckersÆ
fat-bottomed and stalwart roots rock, HoodÆs new songs brood and amble. His
singing has the broken quality of a shamed confession. Luckily, none of this
disrupts the sense of momentum in the songs. TheyÆre compellingly morose.
In ôLeaving Time,ö the drumbeat mimics the throb of a hangover headache. In
ôFifteen Days,ö the acoustic guitar has the scratch of skiffle music, propelling
Hood forward even as ghosts of his past close in on him.
Like any good Southern tale, inebriation has a starring role in the story. In
the opener, ô12:01,ö Hood sneaks across the county line to buy extra booze. In
ôLeaving Time,ö he thanks the Lord for the ôpackage storeö that sells hooch. One
song takes the title ôBetty Ford.ö
In the track ôBetter Than the Truth,ö Hood highlights a character, Billy Ringo,
a stoner who falls out of a window while clutching his bong. Hood also mentions
Ringo in ô12:01,ö while the song ôCome Back Little Starö refers to a real-life
friend of HoodÆs, the wonderful songwriter Vic Chesnutt, who killed himself five
years ago.
The characters he alludes to only serve to fill in our view of the author. That
holds true as well of two songs that refer to HoodÆs granddad: ôDepression Era,ö
which gives lie to ôthe greatest generationö cliche, and ôUntold Pretties,ö a
spoken-word piece.
Even in that last, verbose one, Hood maintains his musicality. ThatÆs a concern
for any project that aims for novelistic scope. Such ambition undermined an
artist as sure as Springsteen, who put out several dark acoustic records that
lost all motion and beauty. But in HoodÆs ô15 Days,ö the mellotron has its own
narrative part, as does the eerie quietude in ô12:01,ö which makes us feel the
desolation of the midnight hour.
ItÆs not a pretty view Hood provides, but itÆs one that makes his inner life
movingly plain.