American Band (album)
| American Band | ||||
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| Studio album by Drive-By Truckers | ||||
| Released | September 30, 2016 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 46:47 | |||
| Label | ATO | |||
| Producer | David Barbe | |||
| Drive-By Truckers chronology | ||||
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| Singles from American Band | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 88/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| American Songwriter | |
| Chicago Tribune |  |
| The Independent | |
| Mojo | |
| Now | 4/5 |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Slant Magazine | |
| Uncut | 9/10 |
| Vice | A |
American Band is the eleventh studio album by American Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers, released on September 30, 2016 on ATO Records. Produced by long-time collaborator David Barbe, and recorded in the summer of 2016, it is the first Drive-By Truckers album since 1999's Pizza Deliverance not to feature cover art by their longtime collaborator Wes Freed.
American Band is their second record with only two songwriters, the other being English Oceans, released two years earlier. All of their earlier records featured three songwriters. The record is notable for containing the most political lyrics of the band's career. At 46:47, it is the band's shortest studio album to date.
Unlike previous albums, which featured cover art made by southern Gothic painter Wes Freed, American Band's album depicts a shadowy image of the American flag being lowered to half-mast. The photo was taken by photographer Danny Clinch. In an interview with Chuck Armstrong of The Boot, Mike Cooley said that the photo is based off a song he always wanted to write about how long the American flag stays at half-mast these days in the United States.
Jonathan Bernstein, writing for Rolling Stone, said that American Band is the group's most politically-charged record yet, noting the controversy it generated, saying Cooley and Patterson have written an album of "blunt, pissed-off Trump-era anthems that already began to stir controversy months before its release." Nearly half of the albums' 11 songs deal with gun violence. The song "Ramon Casiano" is about the little known story of gun rights advocate and former NRA leader Harlon Carter, who shot and killed a 15-year-old Hispanic boy in 1931, but escaped incarceration. Patterson wrote "What it Means" in response to the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, unarmed black teenagers whose killings sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. “Surrender Under Protest,” “Ever South,” and “Guns of Umpqua” examine generations of racial injustice in a country that "shoots first and asks questions later." "Once They Banned Imagine" talks about the U.S. government's attempts to ban art in times of crisis, particularly after the September 11 attacks. Cooley recalled that "After the 9/11 attacks, Clear Channel put out that list of songs that their stations shouldn’t play. I couldn’t get my head around the notion that John Lennon’s "Imagine" was on that list, that it was something we didn’t need to hear at a time when it was exactly what we needed to hear. The Red Scare, the War on Crime, the War on Terrorism, they’re just excuses for cracking down on anything the establishment finds objectionable.”
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Wikipedia