Drive-By Truckers The Unraveling LP (Marble Sky Vinyl)

TAS Rated 4/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the May/June 2020 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

One Of TAS' Ten Best Rock Albums of 2020!

"The Unraveling is the twelfth studio album - the first in three-and-a-half years - by Drive-By Truckers, who move boldly to solidify their status as a different kind of southern rock icon. 2016's breakthrough record American Band found them bracing for a new dystopian reality. The Unraveling sees principal songwriters Patterson Hood...and Mike Cooley expressing dismay at current events. Hood: "How do you write about the daily absurdities when you can't even wrap your head around them in the first place?

"...With The Unraveling, a lifelong dream of Hood and Cooley has been fulfilled: The album was recorded mainly in the legendary Sam Phillips Recording Service studio in Memphis, Tennessee. The leadoff track, "Rosemary with a Bible and a Gun," commemorates an early '90s journey the two songwriters took to Memphis and how their experiences there served as both wake-up call and inspiration.

"...good music..." - Tom Gibbs, Stereophile Magazine, April 2020

Drive-By Truckers are kicking off the 2020 election year with The Unraveling, their first new album in 3 1/2 years (the longest space between new DBT albums ever). Those years were among the most tumultuous the United States has ever seen and the duality between the generally positive state of affairs within the band and the turbulent world outside (or as Patterson Hood puts it: "watching so many things we care about be decimated and destroyed") informed the writing of this album to the core.

The Unraveling was recorded at the historic Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, Tennessee over 85 hours, mostly live in the studio, aided by long-time producer David Barbe and famed engineer Matt Ross-Spang.

Drive-By Truckers' examination of the Southern psyche is a microcosm of how Americans respond to triumph and tragedy...their music hits home, hard.

This veteran Southern outfit's 14th record blends muscular, guitar-driven rock 'n' roll with nuanced character vignettes drawn in sharp, gritty strokes.