The Drive-By Truckers frontman Patterson Hood has spent decades calling out hypocrisy and celebrating grit, and he’s not planning on switching gears anytime soon. The band’s latest album, The Unraveling, drops heavy truths wrapped in Southern rock like a whiskey-soaked sermon delivered by your pissed-off uncle. Hood’s pissed, too—about guns, politics, and how even good people keep voting for garbage.
“It’s like… I still feel like people are fundamentally good,” he says, sounding like he’s trying to convince himself more than anyone else. “But then I see them showing up at the voting booth, supporting shit that just doesn’t make sense. It’s hard to reconcile.” He doesn’t sugarcoat it—never has, never will. It’s this brutal honesty that makes Drive-By Truckers the band you blast when you’re fed up with how things are going but still have enough fire in your belly to do something about it.
One of the album’s sharpest blades is Thoughts and Prayers, a gut-punch of a song that calls out politicians for their perpetual non-response to mass shootings. “I was just so angry,” Hood admits. “And it’s not like anyone’s trying to take every gun away. Christ, the Brady Bill did some good. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped. Then they gutted it, and here we are, doing nothing but offering ‘thoughts and prayers’ every damn time it happens again.”
The song also name-drops flat earthers, because why not take a shot at everyone who makes life harder for the rest of us? “That one just fell into my lap,” Hood laughs. “Right when I was writing the song, there’s this story on the news about some guy trying to launch himself in a homemade rocket to prove the Earth is flat. Are you kidding me? It was just too perfect not to use.” It’s one of those moments where dark humor hits like a slap in the face, and Hood’s not about to hold back on pointing out just how absurd it all is.
Even when he’s railing against the insanity, Hood never lets the music become a secondary thought. The Truckers aren’t about to make a record that sounds like a half-hearted folk protest—The Unraveling is big, loud, and as alive as a wounded animal. “We cut most of it live at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis,” he says. “That place is a dream. It’s like walking into 1962. Tube compressors, echo chambers—hell, it’s like recording in a time capsule.” They tracked the whole thing in seven days, only stepping out of the room to grab a beer or clear their heads. “It’s almost like scoring a movie,” Hood says. “We’re trying to make the music feel as visceral as the lyrics.”
Most of the tracks went down raw and reckless, with the band playing in the room together. “There’s something about playing live that makes it feel like the song is a living thing,” Hood says. “You can’t overthink it. You just have to get in there and beat the hell out of it until it sounds right.” The only exception was Grievance Merchants, which they built piece by piece to give it a different kind of tension. “We wanted it to feel almost abrasive, like the music itself was pushing back against the lyrics,” he says. “It’s a weird one, but it works.”
For Hood, the record’s blend of anger and exhaustion mirrors how he feels about living in the 2020s. “There’s still this weird optimism,” he admits. “Like, yeah, everything’s coming apart at the seams, but we’re still here. We’re still making noise. I guess it’s just trying to make sense of how to keep fighting without losing yourself in the mess.”
Even when he’s screaming into the void, Hood’s not ready to give up on people just yet. “Get out and vote,” he says. “We deserve better. Kentucky deserves better. It’s easy to feel like none of it matters, but that’s just how they want you to feel. We’re better than that.”
In a world that’s coming apart at the seams, Drive-By Truckers are still standing tall—loud, angry, and unapologetically honest. And that’s a damn good thing.
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