Artist: Drive-By Truckers
Album: American Band
Bitrate: 247kbps avg
Quality: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.98.4 / -V0 / 44.100Khz
Label: ATO Records
Genre: Rock
Size: 86.80 megs
PlayTime: 0h 46min 41sec total
Rip Date: 2016-09-30
Store Date: 2016-09-30
Track List:
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01. Ramon Casiano 3:57
02. Darkended Flags On The Cusp Of 2:42
Dawn
03. Surrender Under Protest 3:51
04. Guns Of Umpqua 3:51
05. Filthy And Fried 3:38
06. Sun Don't Shine 3:24
07. Kinky Hypocrite 3:13
08. Ever South 5:44
09. What It Means 6:25
10. Once They Banned Imagine 4:11
11. Baggage 5:45
Release Notes:
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The title affirms Drive-By TruckersÆástatus as one of the emblematic American
bands of their era, whose Southern heritage lends an easy authority to their
diverse assemblages elements of rock, soul, blues and country influences. And
with American Band, theyÆve reached another level, as signalled by the omission,
for the first time, of a Wes Freed cartoon cover in favour of a sombre grey
photo of the Stars andáStripes at half-mast.
This is their state of the union album, its songs peopled not by the usual cast
of fictional barflies and lowlifes but by victims of altogether more realistic
circumstances, starting with ôRamon Casianoö, a 15-year-old Mexican boy who in
1931 was murdered by one Harlon Carter. Carter never faced justice: instead, he
became Commander of the US Border Patrol, and subsequently headed the National
Rifle Association, which he transformed from a huntsmansÆ club into a powerful
right-wing political lobby to help Ronald Reagan become President.
ôHe had the makings of a leader of a certain kind of men/Who need to feel the
worldÆs against them, out to get them if it can,ö runs one couplet, precisely
skewering a prevailing contemporary American mood that overshadows many of the
songs here, from the Confederate apologists of ôSurrender Under Protestö (ôNo
sooner was it over, than the memory made it noblerö) to the trigger-happy police
condemned in ôWhat It Meansö (ôIf you say it wasnÆt racial when they shot him in
his tracks, well I guess that means that you ainÆt blackö) and ôOnce They Banned
Imagineö, a scathing assessment of how the threat of terrorism was parlayed into
a crackdown on liberty.
The half-mast flag flies not just for them, but also for soldiers squandered in
futile foreign adventurism, and for victims of the pandemic of high-school
shootings û here brilliantly evoked, in ôGuns Of Umpquaö, by the image of a
student desperately barricading a door against a shooter whilst reliving the
memory of a recent idyllic rural jaunt: heaven and hell, in one mind in an
Oregon classroom. Elsewhere, ôKinky Hypocritesö is a dig at corrupt
televangelists, delivered in a rollicking blast of Stones-style raunch-rock, and
ôBaggageö a tender tribute to Robin Williams that acknowledges the widespread
affliction of depression: ôOnly inches separate you from the darkness in meö.
While the subjectámatter demands some of the arrangements are more gentle and
sensitive than usual, the new balance of rockers and reflections actually works
to American BandÆs advantage. Thoughtful, engaging and utterly contemporary,
itÆs one of the albums of the year.