Drive-By Truckers are angry. Aghast at the state of their country and with a Trump presidency on the horizon, the Georgia rock veterans wrote their best album of the decade with American Band in 2016. But The Unraveling rivals it for quality.
The songs play out like a dissection of America’s fatal flaws. Political inaction over gun violence is lambasted on Thoughts and Prayers, Babies in Cages takes aim at grim border detention centres, the opioid crisis is lamented on Heroin Again and Grievance Merchants condemns exploitative white nationalists. The impassioned lyrics are on the nose — “Stick it up your ass with your useless thoughts and prayers” — and often introspective, as frontman Patterson Hood rasps on 21st Century USA: “With Big Brother watching me always, why must I always feel so alone?”
It’s heavy but there’s a vitality that keeps it afloat. The production is earthy and vigorous with a Springsteen-esque fire on tracks such as Armageddon’s Back in Town. Beneath all the hefty old-school rock, though, there runs an undercurrent of vulnerability, exposed in the quieter, country-tinged moments.
By the end, we’re left in no doubt that America is going through hell. At least The Unraveling has been salvaged from the wreckage.
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