'The Unraveling' Review: Driver-By Truckers' honesty about disillusionment in America is a sign of the times
Alternative country and Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers are back with their new album ‘The Unraveling’. Following the success of their previous LP ‘American Band’, fans and critics were more than ready for the band to return with their brand of brutal honesty.
And they will not be disappointed!
On ‘The Unraveling’, the band does not attempt to hide their disgust and disillusionment with where Trump's America is heading. “This ain’t the country that our grandads fought for” (the lyrics in ‘Babies in Cages’) is a statement that clearly echoes the sentiments of many who are horrified by the border crisis, particularly the imprisonment of innocent children as part of a war being waged on American civilians by modern politics.
The Truckers are, however, stunningly adept at shifting that spotlight around back onto us, the listeners with lyrics like “I’m sorry to my children / I’m sorry what they see / I’m sorry for the world that that they’ll inherit from me / Babies in cages”. At the end of the day, as horrific as the actions of those in power might be, we do very little to stop their reign of terror as we nonchalantly toss out a few heartfelt ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ from within our own privileged bubbles.
“They’re lined up on the playground, their hands all in the air / See it on our newsfeed and we cry out in despair / They’re counting up the casualties and everyone’s choosing sides / There’s always someone to blame / Never anywhere to hide,” the lyrics from 'Thoughts and Prayers', are a painful reminder of the role we play in everything happening right now.
While some critics do note that the tracks on ‘The Unraveling’ do not take the band’s sound forward, one could argue that their lyrics define them just as much as their sound. And with this album, they have taken their style of songwriting and built on it by weaving modern themes into their easily-recognizable brand of confronting how “political becomes personal”.
These are dark, bleak times we live in, with countries aching to start another world war and active genocides taking place all over the world and a deadly virus threatening to wipe out sections of the world sitting on top of all of that just like a pretty little bow on a pretty little apocalyptic package.
But Drive-By Truckers doesn’t want ‘The Unraveling’ to end on that note. Band member Patterson Hood had this to say in a recent interview with NPR, “...to me, the hope I get comes from the kids — from not only my kids, but the young people that I'm around so much in their 20s are amazing...The last line of the song, 'Awaiting Resurrection,' that ties in with the album cover, which has the two little boys standing on the beach watching the sunset. I'd like to think that somehow that is the ray of hope at the end.”
While 'The Unraveling' might not be what many wanted from the band musically, it is exactly what the world needs in music right now - a gritty, honest exposition of what the world has become with a note of hope to remind us that all is not lost. There is some hope left in us yet.