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DS Album Review: The Gaslight Anthem emerge from hiatus recharged on “History Books”

In the interest of full disclosure, The Gaslight Anthem has been on my short list of favorite bands for the better part of two decades. I think when I reviewed the latest Hold Steady record earlier this year, I think I mentioned how Gaslight/Brian Fallon and The Hold Steady/Craig Finn and Lucero/Ben Nichols and Dave […]

The Gaslight Anthem (l-r: Benny Horowitz, Alex Rosamilia, Brian Fallon, Alex Levine)
Photo cred: Casey McAllister

In the interest of full disclosure, The Gaslight Anthem has been on my short list of favorite bands for the better part of two decades. I think when I reviewed the latest Hold Steady record earlier this year, I think I mentioned how Gaslight/Brian Fallon and The Hold Steady/Craig Finn and Lucero/Ben Nichols and Dave Hause have essentially been my personal musical Mt. Rushmore for most of my adult life, particularly when viewed through the lens of bands that are in my generation. They aren’t one of the bands I grew up listening to in my parents’ house (read as: Springsteen and Seger and Mellencamp and Petty, etc) and they weren’t in that generation of bands like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Bad Religion that became “my” bands as a teenager. Instead, they were bands and voices that I felt like I grew up with; we shared similar age brackets and socioeconomic brackets and so they resonated on a level that is just different and more personal than the from my more formative years. At least I think that’s what I said.

I vividly remember not only where I was (my bedroom) but what I was doing (getting ready to drop my newborn off at daycare on the way to work) when I first saw the video for “The ’59 Sound” and vividly remember that visceral feeling that “ohhh…this is really good” that came over me. I followed them every step of the way and shot them a handful of times and have lyrics tattooed on me and got super starstruck the couple times I met Brian before I first actually met Brian. Hell, I even loved Get Hurt from the very, very first listen. And so I count myself as one of those who was sad when they went on hiatus (not sad enough to drive to Bridgeport, Connecticut, for their then-last US show…but almost that sad) and, conversely, super happy when they announced that they were getting back together.

But I’ll also be the first to admit that I was a little nervous when news of their comeback album, History Books, was released. Cautiously optimistic, sure, but still nervous, because you never really know how a band is going to function both internally and externally when they get back together. There isn’t really a lot of precedent in our area of the punk rock world for bands getting back together and putting out meaningful, listenable music after a seven-year break. And they certainly can’t be expected to have the same level of proverbial piss and vinegar or youthful energy that drew so many of us toward them in the first place…although neither are those of us who are now in our mid-forties.

And so I purposely avoided all advance coverage of History Books. I ended up sort of accidentally hearing the lead single “Positive Charge” in passing at a store and I think eventually on Spotify and I warmed to it immediately and listened to it again repeatedly but that just strengthened my resolve to avoid listening to the rest of the singles before I could do my typical old man routine of listening to the whole album in order, start to finish, as the good lord intended. (Side note: on a ten-song album, four advance singles seems like a lot.) I even avoided the Springsteen single. YES, I EVEN AVOIDED THE SPRINGSTEEN SINGLE.

And so last Friday, I saved up a bunch of my pennies and drove to the local record store and picked up a copy of History Books on something called purple smoke vinyl and I opened it up and it didn’t have a download code and I don’t have a record player in my Honda Accord, so I went online and plopped down some more of my pennies and bought a digital copy of the record and then I downloaded it and then I hit play and listened to it start to finish in the car. You know…as the good lord intended. I initially had the intention of reviewing the record in real time, making notes as I listened to it and summing it up at the end without much in the way of editing but, as you’ll recall, I was driving, and I’m okay with texting and driving at the red lights, but 2500 word album reviewing is a little much to do behind the wheel. So I let it play. And play again. And play again. And now I’ve listened to it so many times in the last seven days that it’s hard to still look at it as a new record. And that’s a good sign, because it means History Books is a great fit in the collection.

The album kicks off with “Spider Bites,” which is about as quintessential a Gaslight album opener as you can get. The intro hits hard and fast, the swirling, fuzzed out guitars over big, dynamic drums setting the tone right from the opening notes that a post-hiatus Gaslight Anthem is not going to relegate themselves to crafty veteran status. No, there is plenty of giddy-up on this collective fastball. The “and so we struggle/for each other” is a collective rallying cry that not only are the band back, but that they – and we – are all in this together.

“History Books” follows, and leans directly into the longstanding Springsteen comparisons by having The Boss himself take over lead vocal duties for the second verse. The subject matter is poignant coming from a Fallon who is reflecting on a lifetime of connections and acquaintances that he may want to leave in the rearview; it takes a particularly haunting tone when coming from Springsteen’s mouth, knowing how much time the latter has spent reflecting on – and grappling with – his own legacy and career in recent years. It must be a daunting task to have an icon such as Springsteen tell you to write a duet for you two to perform together, but I’d have to say Fallon nailed the tone and timbre necessary for the occasion.

“Autumn,” which is clearly the most Gaslight Anthemy-titled Gaslight Anthem song in the ouevre – at least since “Halloween,” I guess” – follows up and is the first of the album’s mid-tempo tracks. It’s got a fun shuffle to it that we haven’t heard on many a Gaslight track before. I like to think that there are three main styles for a traditional Gaslight Anthem song; there are the howling songs and there are the haunting songs that make up the comparative ends of the spectrum, with the mid-tempo ones occupying that center. Lead single “Positive Charge” is the third ‘howler’ of the bunch. It was probably the appropriate choice for lead single, for both musical and lyrical reasons. It leans most into that uptempo rock thing that Gaslight has made their wheelhouse for the better part of the last couple of decades. Benny Horowitz and Alex Levine locking down the tempo allowing for Rosamilia’s guitar to soar into and out of the anthemic choruses and outro.

With a story inspired by The Virgin Suicides – a book that I guess I should finally getting around to reading given that it’s been on my bookcase for two decades – “Michigan, 1975” quickly made its way onto the short list of my favorite Gaslight songs. It’s a sonic kin to TGA’s rendition of Fake Problems’ “Songs For Teenagers” that appeared on the Jersey foursome’s 2014 The B-Sides collection. It’s a haunting song from start to finish, rife with layered meaning and imagery. The hard-charging, descending riff and singalong pre-chorus in “Little Fires” might be my favorite moments on the album and the best examples of “ooh, this sounds like Gaslight Anthem, but it also sounds like a new wrinkle.” In the end, we all burn little fires. Yet another cathartic and life-affirming singalong outro.

Oh, and “Little Fires” has also got a super cool swirling guitar solo, which means this is probably a good time to give Alex Rosamilia his flowers. It sounds like he really had fun making this record. For my money, he’s long been the band’s unsung hero; his noodling runs providing a unique texture that helped make Gaslight Gaslight. In addition to “Little Fires,” it’s super evident on “History Books” and especially the reverb-heavy solo on “I Live In The Room Above Her.” The latter is another song dominated by big chunky riffs in the intro and the choruses and it’s held down by the underrated rhythm section of Benny Horowitz and Alex Levine through the verses. It manages to check both the “haunting” and “howling” boxes, it’s tale a story of living above a woman who may or may not be a serial killer.

Slightly out of order, but “The Weatherman” is a mid-tempo song that’s got a shuffle to the rhythm in the verses that keeps it from feeling formulaic. “Empires” is an interesting song. It is firmly entrenched in the “haunter” category, and as such it might be the song that could most-easily pass as a Brian Fallon solo song (or at least as a Horrible Crowes song). On first listen, it wasn’t my favorite, and yet over the course of the last week, it’s the song whose chorus has woven its way into my brain and I find myself unconsciously humming the melody in my head on repeat. History Books comes to a close with “A Lifetime Of Preludes.” It’s another slow-burn that I thought might be my least favorite on the record, except that it’s not. It might actually lyrically be the heaviest song on the record, and it’s tale of once-requited love becomes a bit more of a stomach-punch on subsequent listens.

I think I just wish “A Lifetime Of Preludes” was longer. At 3:17, it clocks in as the shortest of the album’s ten tracks, but it’s got a lot of bright textures that I would have loved to have seen expanded and turned into a soaring, six-minute show slow closer of a song. But maybe that’s the point of a lifetime of preludes I suppose, right? Also “I just wish it was longer” is my only overarching critique of History Books. The high points of the album my not quite reach the stratospheric highs of The ’59 Sound or Get Hurt or songs like, “45,” but they’re still comparatively high and with relatively few valleys corresponding to those peaks. The band clearly shook off any of the rust that might have accumulated through a half-dozen years apart from making music together. As a songwriter, Fallon has long-since shown himself more than capable of taking the heart-on-your-sleeve vigor of his sweaty, basement punk rock years and maturing in a way that doesn’t lose his listeners. He seems happy, perhaps aided by the passing of time that’s allowed him to deal with some of the more traumatic episodes in his life. And yet that happiness allows a certain clarity that keeps his lyrics are heavy, thoughtful, riddled with metaphor and double meaning, and the expanded musical palette of Gaslight’s collective members helps paint broader and more cinematic pictures, creating relatable characters that invoke many a different place and time in the lives of those of us on the consumer end. History books are, they say, written by the victors, and while we all know that that’s a bit of a lazy argument in most cases, it’s certainly true in the literal sense here. Kudos to Brian and Benny and Alex and Alex (and Ian). How we’ve missed you, and feeling good to be alive.

On a scale of 1 to 5 pork rolls, I give History Books a solid 4.5.

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
history books jersey tga the gaslight anthem thirty tigers

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DS Album Review: The Hold Steady – “The Price Of Progress”

There exists a small handful of bands that I feel like, in some ways, I’ve grown up alongside. I feel like if you’re an active music listener, once you get to about your mid-twenties, you reach a point where the current bands that you’re listening to have transitioned from being bands of your parents’ generation […]

Band photo: Shervin Lainez

There exists a small handful of bands that I feel like, in some ways, I’ve grown up alongside. I feel like if you’re an active music listener, once you get to about your mid-twenties, you reach a point where the current bands that you’re listening to have transitioned from being bands of your parents’ generation (or at least your cool uncle’s generation, although my parents were and are pretty cool so I’m lucky that way) to bands that are in that sort of in-between-but-still-older generation to, finally, bands that are basically your peers. People who are right in your same age bracket and same general socioeconomic bracket and with whom you shared a series of experiences, both personally and culturally, even if you never met and instead lived hundreds or thousands of miles apart. As a result, they resonate with you on a level that is just different and more personal than the music of your formative years. They become “your” bands, and you continue to grow and change and amass shared life experiences and go through different phases arm-in-arm (and maybe if you’re lucky you get to meet them along the way and share actual experiences that only serve to confirm their place in your life). So if you’ve read anything that I’ve written over the last dozen years here at Dying Scene, you’re probably aware that The Loved Ones/Dave Hause and Gaslight Anthem/Brian Fallon and Lucero/Ben Nichols comprise probably 3/4ths of my own personal Mt. Rushmore. The fourth and final spot undoubtedly belongs to The Hold Steady.

In many ways, The Hold Steady itself has grown up quite considerably along the way. In a literal sense, they’ve gone from a four-piece to a five-piece to a differently-assembled five-piece to a six-piece to a six-piece that sometimes has horns. Musically, the band has long-since moved on from being simply “America’s best bar band” to a band that has continued to level-up musically and push the sonic boundaries of what it means to be The Hold Steady. That is never more evident than on The Price Of Progress, the newest of the band’s nine studio full-lengths.

Due out today (happy new release day!), The Price Of Progress is a bit of a journey. I was lucky enough to receive a press copy long enough in advance that I decided to give the album a full couple of listens and then put it aside for a while and then revisit it before it came time to write the actual review. I’m glad I did, because The Price Of Progress is a bit of a journey. In many ways, it may be the “least Hold Steadyish” album of the nine in their ouevre. Few and far-between are the drunken, sweaty burners and the cathartic, sing-along-in-exultation choruses and the ripping guitar solos or even the extended keyboard jams. Those first couple of listens a few months ago left me with the vague impression that “well…that’s different.” And yet, in the time that’s ensued, I can’t help but shake the feeling that, in a lot of ways, maybe this is their “most Hold Steadyish” album to date. Let’s get into the weeds.

Were I to pick one word to best describe The Price Of Progress, that word would have to be ‘theatrical,’ and I mean that in the literal sense of the word in that the bulk of the album’s ten tracks create the impression that you’re watching a play unfold before you. Ten sets of different characters performing in front of a studio audience, all narrated at side-stage by frontman Craig Finn’s trademark sprechgesang vocal stylings. “Grand Junction” gets the festivities underway and the atypical time signature (6/8? I think? I’m not good at musical theory but I think it’s 6/8 and I asked my brother and he’s a music teacher and he said yes so we’ll go with that) is an immediate signal that we’re not in Kansas (or Brooklyn…or Minneapolis) anymore, Toto. Tad Kubler and Steve Selvidge trade off some nifty guitar work in the bridge that’s as close as we’re getting to a solo. “Sideways Skull” comes next, and was an early single for a reason as it is probably the most “Hold Steady song on the record. It feels like it could be set in a universe that’s a continuation of Open Door Policy‘s “Family Farm.” There are big, swirling guitar sounds and a big, cathartic build-up with plenty of oozin’ aahs. Lyrically, it’s filled with the dark humor and oddly specific references (“the jacket held together by the rock band patches”) that somehow make the imagery instantly relatable, as does the referential nod to the home state shared by both THS multi-instrumental wizard Franz Nicolay and I. “Carlos Is Crying” has a super fun swing in the verse, complete with a spanky guitar groove and some layered harmonica and keys (from Nicolay, no doubt) providing the texture. Wonder if the dickhead in Denver is the same fella that cut his hair in the airport bathroom back on Thrashing Thru The Passion?

“Understudies” is a real unique and interesting song. There’s a slow-build organ-centered intro that provides the backbone until the Bobby Drake’s drums kick in about a minute later, then there’s a super theatrical Galen Polivka bass groove laid down over some dramatic strings. Lyrically it’s layer upon layer of metaphor and it’s tough to tell if you should take the story literally or figuratively or if it even matters which one you choose. “Sixers” is one of my favorites. There are a couple of big pseudo-starts that hint at a musical direction before the real mood is revealed as a mid-tempo rock song. There’s no real chorus per se, but there is at least what seems like a standard structure, but then we get to an interlude that just kind of takes over. It’s one of the REAL theatrical vignettes, and it’s followed by “The Birdwatchers,” a song that caught me off guard at first but has become a very strong favorite. There’s a real interesting musical bed/intro, and it like “Sixers,” it plays as a theatrical vignette. There are horns, but they largely serve as texture and not a lead instrument, though they do devolve into a bit of a free-jazz sound at times. There are also bells and chimes, and the curtain just kinda ends on the song and the story, the latter of which is also riddled with metaphor and double meaning.

“City At Eleven” has no real chorus. It may be the most “Craig Finn-ish” song on The Price Of Progress. “Perdido” which translates to “lost” and which has an almost hypnotic guitar melody, a evokes a sort of slowed-down version of the Ella Fitzgerald/Duke Ellington standard with which it shares a name. “Distortions Of Faith” is a smoky, blues waltz number. The guitars are drenched in reverb and the song has a long, descending outro. “Flyover Halftime” brings our procession to a close with what is maybe the second “Hold Steadiest” song on the album. The guitars growl but they don’t overpower. We’ve got a hornets reference! And we’ve also got a fan on the field…

Because of its focus on scope and texture and scenery rather than catchiness or bombast or catharsis, The Price Of Progress is more of a grower than a shower, but it’s also the kind of album, that once it does grow, it takes over and becomes probably The Hold Steady’s most instantly re-listenable album since at least Teeth Dreams (I know the fanboys will be in a tizzy over that statement, but that’s a great rock and roll album and you know it).

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
the hold steady the price of progress thirty tigers

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DS Interview: River Shook (Sarah Shook and the Disarmers) on their new genre-bending project Mightmare’s debut album, “Cruel Liars”

Remember back at the beginning of the pandemic when we all found ourselves with an overwhelming amount of unexpected free time and we told ourselves that we were going to be productive and work on ourselves and maybe pick up a new hobby? River Shook (who still performs as Sarah professionally and uses they/them pronouns) […]

Remember back at the beginning of the pandemic when we all found ourselves with an overwhelming amount of unexpected free time and we told ourselves that we were going to be productive and work on ourselves and maybe pick up a new hobby? River Shook (who still performs as Sarah professionally and uses they/them pronouns) is one of the small percentage of the population who actually made good on those vows. They had been fresh off yet another busy year of touring with their main project, Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, when the world shut down for all intents and purposes. Instead of resting on their laurels or rearranging the pantry 37 times or whatever other mindless pursuits some of us undertook to pass the time, Shook stayed busy writing and recording. But this wasn’t their traditional writing and recording; Sarah Shook and the Disarmers’ most recent full-length, Nightroamer, was released in February of this year on Thirty Tigers but the recording process wrapped right before the world shut down.

Shook has been writing songs for a long time and while most of us are familiar with their work primarily with the Disarmers, there’s always been an “other” pile; songs that were solid and complete and yet didn’t quite fit the Disarmers’ rabble-rousing alt-country mold. A couple of those “other” songs found their way onto Nightroamer, albeit in reworked fashion. “When we went in for our last rehearsal before we went into the studio to record Nightroamer,” Shook explains, “we hammered out arrangements and got them record-ready, and we ended up putting two songs (“I Got This” and “Been Lovin’ You”) on the record that were not intended to be Disarmers songs.”

Initially, Shook’s plan was to turn some more of the “other” tracks into more polished songs. As Shook tells it, that plan changed…and for the better. “I had a few in the works and at some point, I realized that if I changed a couple things and improved my methods in a few different ways, I could hypothetically make an entire album.” In addition to their normal role as guitar player and vocalist, Shook took to programming drums and beats and samples on their new material, with the newfound goal of keeping the material for themselves. “I sort of changed my perspective as far as being a little bit more serious and treating it more like a job instead of just something to pass the time,” Shook explains. “I have a tendency to hyperfocus, so I would wake up in the morning, make coffee, and start working, start building tracks. One of the things that I had the most fun with on that project is how many layers there are on every song. And being able to orchestrate that myself and not being accountable to anyone else, it was just me and my brain and our relationship working together to make this record happen.”

The project quickly picked up steam as Shook realized the extent of their home recording capabilities. “Realizing that (recording quality-sounding audio from their North Carolina home) was an option and knowing that I had maybe $1200 for my entire budget for the album,” Shook expounds, “I told myself that if I did absolutely everything that I could possibly do on my own, and then use all of that money to hire Ian Schreier to mix it and Brent Lambert from Kitchen Mastering to master it.” The latter point meant reuniting with the team that put the finishing touches on the Disarmers’ first two studio albums, Sidelong and Years. It was sort of an ‘if it wasn’t broke, don’t fix it’ decision, and one that they were empowered to make completely on their own. “One of the things that I love most about (this project) is that I’m not accountable to anybody. It’s all me. On one hand, it’s very liberating, and on the other hand, it’s intense, because I had to start a small business, and all of this stuff is new for me.”

The end result of those writing sessions was Mightmare. It’s a new project; stylistically, lyrically, all of the above. It’s elicited labels like “dark pop” or “sludge rock” or “brooding rock” and it’s most definitely loosely defined as ‘indie rock’ and it’s definitely a radical stylistic departure from the Disarmers and especially from River’s prior project, Sarah Shook and the Devil. And so when it came time to find a label to release the Mightmare project on, it meant looking outside the normal alt-country channels. “Kill Rock Stars was my number-one pick,” states Shook rather emphatically. If you’re going to release an indie rock album, there probably aren’t many better options, as the iconic has been home to some iconic records by the likes of Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney and The Decemberists and Mary Lou Lord.

Oh, and of course Elliott Smith, Shook’s own personal introduction to the label. “I was maybe seventeen or eighteen and a coworker at the Wegmans in Geneva, New York loaned me an Elliott Smith CD, and this was, mind you, probably the fourth or fifth CD I ever listened to that wasn’t Christian music,” she notes. Shook’s strict religious upbringing has been covered in depth in other sources (like our chat earlier this year surrounding the release of Nightroamer – check it out here), but suffice it to say that Smith’s voice and lyrics and the label’s logo served as keystone moments in the building of what became their musical foundation. “I remember seeing the Kill Rock Stars logo on the CD or on the back jacket, and that’s a name that just sticks with you. When I gave the CD back to my friend, I thanked him profusely and said “if you have any more material from this person…this is what I want to be listening to!’.”

After some initial back-and-forth, Kill Rock Stars was on board, and the album, entitled Cruel Liars, had a release date of October 14th. Next came the task of booking some record release shows. There’s one small caveat that should be fairly apparent: “I talked to my booking agent Chris Rusk, and I was just like “it’s coming out on October 14th, and we need to do like a two-week tour around it,” and Chris was like “who’s ‘we’…you don’t have a band?!?” It’s here that we remind you that save for a few bass tracks recorded by Aaron Oliva, Shook performed and recorded all of the music on Cruel Liars on their own…meaning there wasn’t exactly a “band” to take on the road. They continue: “I was like “you worry about booking the tour, I’ll worry about putting the band together. I’ve never let you down, I will have something, it’ll be awesome, I’ll make you proud!”

The rounding out of the band that became Mightmare was done during small breaks between Disarmers tour runs. Real small breaks. The first call wasn’t exactly a long-distance one; it was to none other than newer Disarmers guitar player Blake Tallent. Shook’s longtime North Carolina scene veteran friend Ash Lopez joined on bass, and after auditioning some less-than-ideal candidates for drummer, along came Ethan Standard, who was previously unknown to Shook but had played with Tallent in previous projects from time to time. What followed was a crash-course in all things Mightmare as the band prepared to head out on a two-week tour that was not only its first headlining tour, but its first-ever shows. 

“Basically, the Disarmers got home from a tour and we had four days of back-to-back rehearsals with Mightmare, and then Mightmare went out for two weeks,” explains Shook. “The four days that we all had rehearsing together, we made minute changes to the arrangements, took crazy notes, and committed stuff to memory. And I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt the anticipation and excitement that I had playing that first Mightmare show…maybe that’s because I’m sober and more present.” Shook, as followers of theirs will know, got sober a few months before the pandemic kicked off, and has been an outspoken advocate of mental health resources like Open Path Collective, in addition to being a tireless champion of LGBTQIA+ causes. While we’ve used genre labels like “indie rock” and “alt-country” and “dark pop” to categorize both Sarah Shook and the Disarmers and Mightmare throughout the course of this story, we’ve got to say that being a queer, non-binary, sober singer/songwriter and champion of mental health causes is about as “punk rock” as it gets.

You can check out Mightmare’s debut, Cruel Liars, below, and keep scrolling to read our full Q&A!

(The following Q&A has been condensed for clarity and content purposes.)

Dying Scene (Jay Stone): So thanks for chatting again! I was looking through my list a little bit ago, and it’s been roughly ten years that I’ve been doing artist interviews, and I think in the 160 or so that I’ve done (editor’s note: the actual number is 188. Yikes.) I think there is only one other time where I’ve interviewed the same person twice in the same calendar year (*both laugh*). And never for two different projects. (Editor’s note: bonus points awarded if you can guess who the other one was. It was in 2016, but that’s all you get for a hint.) So this is cool! We talked at the beginning of the year for the most recent Sarah Shook and the Disarmers album, and now we have Mightmare. I feel like I think I knew at the time that this was coming, but now that people everywhere have gotten to hear it, this is a really cool and different record!

River Shook: Thank you!

And so I have to assume that that was the goal; that stuff that ended up as Mightmare couldn’t be turned into Sarah Shook and the Disarmers songs, right?

Not necessarily. When we went in for our last rehearsal before we went into the studio to record Nightroamer, I think there were twelve songs that we had worked up, essentially. We had hammered out the arrangements for (them) and got them record-ready. We ended up putting two songs on the record that were not intended to be Disarmers songs – intended is not the right word, but they were two songs that kind of just went into the “other” pile, versus songs that are very clearly Disarmers. Those were “I Got This” and “Been Lovin’ You.” It’s interesting; I feel like I’m in this spot where writing songs that aren’t Disarmers songs is nothing new per se, but now that I have this outlet, I’m in a position where I’m learning to sort of assign songs to one project or the other. Which is interesting. 

Are there other songs that became Disarmers songs over the years that didn’t necessarily start out as Disarmers songs but that you had to sort of shoehorn into the Disarmers mold? Because I feel like one of the fun things about Mightmare is that you can totally forgo any sort of semblance of a mold, really. You’re not pigeonholed into a style because it’s a brand new thing entirely. 

The only song that I would say really fits into that category would be “Been Lovin’ You” and possibly “I Got This” but I guess that’s just an indication that while I was writing all of these songs that to me were very clearly falling under the Disarmers umbrella, I was also writing a ton of other songs that in the pre-Mightmare days, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with. But if I wrote a song that I felt was worth saving and worth hanging on to but that wasn’t a good fit for the Disarmers necessarily, I’d make a pretty rudimentary demo of it on my MacBook with Garageband and sort of catalog it that way in case I wanted to come back and reference it, or in case I wanted to try to make it fit within the Disarmers context. But I feel like there’s always been enough material being written to satisfy both projects, so at this point in time, it’s kind of like full circle and I have two outlets and everything has a place!

Do you write differently for them? Or have you started to write differently for them? What was your normal Disarmers writing process? Was it the sort of standard you and an acoustic guitar and see where it goes from there? 

No, I’ve never been a disciplined writer, and any time that I have taken up a pen and paper and an instrument with the intention of writing a song, nothing good ever comes out of it. (*both laugh*) Nothing worth keeping anyway. (*both laugh*)

That’s interesting!

Yeah, I don’t ever have, like, an agenda or a plan when I write a song. I’m kind of just going about my day and I have to be in the right place at the right time. Typically I have to be alone, although since we started touring heavily a few years back (before Covid) I can sort of get songs going even if there are other people around, I just have a different process. But yeah, I go about my day and if the stars align and I’m able to, I sit down with a notebook and a pen and a guitar and typically I’m done with a song within like thirty minutes. There might be some light touching up or changing one or two words, but it’s pretty much the whole thing all at once and it’s the lyrics, the melody, the chord progression and a loose arrangement, and that is what I either take to the Disarmers to start working collaboratively at that point. Everyone has a say and we work out “well let’s do this for the nitro or the outro, or let’s put the solo here instead of here…” All of that stuff is decided together. In Mightmare, I have sort of unlimited time to get all of that stuff together. It’s a different process in terms of the actual logistics of it; I don’t have to go anywhere, I just sit on my couch and do everything myself. 

The Mightmare stuff sort of started, if I have read correctly from other places, during Covid, right? Because Nightroamer was essentially finished right before the world shut down. So is Mightmare all stuff that came after you were done writing Nightroamer?

 Not necessarily. I had a lot of demos just kind of sitting around and when I actually started making the album, that isn’t even what I thought I was doing at the time. My plan was to sit down and make more polished versions of one or two of the demos I had to make them a little more in the neighborhood of what I was looking for. I had a few in the works and at some point, I realized that if I changed a couple things and improved my methods in a few different ways, I could hypothetically make an entire album. And again, this was in the Covid isolation at the beginning of the pandemic, so realizing that that was an option and knowing that I had maybe $1200 for my entire budget for the album – because I knew I was going to be out of work indefinitely – I told myself that if I did absolutely everything that I could possibly do on my own, and then use all of that money to hire Ian Schreier to mix it and Brent Lambert from Kitchen Mastering to master it…those were the guys that worked on Sidelong and on Years, and I had wanted to work with both of them again on Nightroamer, and it just kind of happened that Pete Anderson was interested (in the latter project) and this was kind of my way to say “I kinda want to get back to this other format, because I feel like if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And I’m really happy with the work that these people do, so it was cool to be able to make that decision for myself, too. One of the things that I love most about Mightmare is that I’m not accountable to anybody. It’s all me. On one hand, it’s very liberating, and on the other hand, it’s intense, because I had to start a small business, and all of this stuff is new for me. 

That’s daunting, isn’t it. Because if it sinks or swims…but ESPECIALLY if it sinks…that’s all on you, right?

Yeah! Exactly. And it’s really hard, too, because I feel like most creative people really don’t have a business mindset, we don’t have a capitalist mindset. We’re not like “oh, I have to write this song so it appeals to the most people so I can make the most money.” That’s not what you’re thinking when you’re writing a song. You’re thinking “I need to express myself to kind of A) get something off my chest and B) hopefully be able to look at what I’ve written and be objective about my own situation. There’s so much more meaning in that than in making a quick buck.

Oh but there certainly are people who are in the business for those reasons and who do write music for commercial appeal…not that that music usually appeals to me.

Yeah! And their cars are much nicer than my car too! (*both laugh*)

How long into the process of realizing that you could record not just demos but essentially full songs did you realize that it was going to be a full record right out of the gate?

Once I had the realization that I could tweak a few things and make something that was a quality worthy of being a record, that instantly became the goal. I made the necessary adjustments; I sort of changed my perspective as far as being a little bit more serious and treating it more like a job instead of just something to pass the time, I have a tendency to hyperfocus, so I would wake up in the morning, make coffee, and start working, start building tracks. One of the things that I had the most fun with on that project is how many layers there are on every song. There are SO MANY LAYERS! And being able to orchestrate that myself and not being accountable to anyone else, it was just me and my brain and our relationship working together to make this record happen. It was snap decision after snap decision, and by the time I was done with it; by the time it was ready to take in to get mixed and mastered, I really thought it could actually be something. Kill Rock Stars was my number-one pick. My manager was talking to them but things weren’t really going anywhere. There were a couple other labels that expressed interest that I just didn’t feel were very good fits for the project. And then, at some point, Kill Rock Stars came back and they were like “hey, we know this is done, but if you can wait til next year to put this out, we can make it work.” 

I was going to ask how the Kill Rock Stars thing came about, because as a child of the 90s, Kill Rock Stars was HUGE obviously. So many legendary bands and legendary albums recorded like all of their work on that label, so I had wanted to hear it anyway obviously, but when I heard that Kill Rock Stars was involved, I went “ooh! This is going to be different (than Disarmers music).” 

Yeah! Absolutely! They provided the opportunity to release it the same year, but it wouldn’t have made as much sense to release it with only a couple months of lead time. It needed to have basically a year of preparation to get various ducks into various rows. 

Do you remember the first Kill Rock Stars album you had? I was looking back at their discography knowing that this interview was coming up and I was trying to remember where they first came onto my radar, and I think it was Bikini Kill. I know I have like every Sleater-Kinney album too, but I think the first was Bikini Kill. Do you remember what yours was?

Oh yeah it was Elliott Smith! 

I’m embarrassed to say but I got into Elliott Smith weirdly late. I don’t know how I sort of missed him when he was, uh, alive…I was definitely more Bikini Kill, Hovercraft, Mary Lou Lord…

I think I was also introduced to him posthumously. I was maybe 17 or 18 and a coworker at the Wegmans in Geneva, New York, he loaned me an Elliott Smith CD, and this was, mind you, probably like the fourth or the fifth CD I ever listened to that wasn’t Christian music, so I was very early into discovering what for everyone else was normal music. But I remember seeing the Kill Rock Stars logo on the CD or on the back jacket, and that’s a name that just sticks with you. When I gave the CD back to my friend, I thanked him profusely and said “if you have any more material from this person…this is what I want to be listening to!” I remember him giving me I think two burned CDs that had a big giant mix of Elliott’s songs, and with that, he gave me an actual newspaper clipping that covered his death, which I actually have to this day. Twenty years later or whatever I still have that. That was a very keystone moment for me. 

We have referenced CDs and newspapers in the last few minutes…that’s a sign of dating ourselves. (*both laugh*)

I prefer to think of it as nostalgia! (*both laugh*)

Fair enough! Getting back to the music a little bit, did you have different influences, not so much lyrically but sonically, when it came to writing the material that would end up on the Mightmare project, especially with all of the layering that you were talking about? Was that influenced by things you’d been listening to or was that more a product of just experimenting and seeing what you could do?

I really don’t have influences. From the press that I’ve seen likening Mightmare to other artists or bands or projects, I honestly haven’t recognized any of them.

That’s awesome, actually.

Yeah, I know that it’s very common – pretty much industry standard – to sort of have a reference list. I’ve made records in the past where the producer has asked for a list of reference songs and I’m just like “there is no reference! There’s no reference, this is its own thing entirely!” I don’t want it to sound like us. Especially with the Disarmers having their own distinct sound, we don’t need to try to sound like anybody else! (*both laugh*) I feel like Mightmare has that as well. It has a very distinct personality, and everything is done in service to the song. Every decision that I made for every single track, and every tiny, minute little portion of a melody line or a sample…all of that, the only goal is to make the best decision for what is going to make the song shine the most, for lack of a better way to say that. Everything is to illuminate and emphasize the lyrics and kind of bastion them.

Especially the layering thing…and thinking bigger picture than just your role as a guitar player or a vocalist, but when it came to adding all of those layers and textures and instrumentation yourself, does that stuff get addictive for a while, for lack of a better phrase? Once you learn all of the little tricks that you can do and things that you can add, does that become an addictive thing and make you think “ooh, what else can I do next?!?”

Absolutely!

Because I feel like it was a really fun record to make in that regard, especially to make by yourself. 

Yeah, absolutely. I think there were one or two songs I had to go back through and choose one or two tracks to omit, even though it fit with what was going on, it was crowding this other more important melody line, or it needed to be removed to give this other part more room to do its own thing. Yeah, if I could make my living sitting in my living room for eight hours a day and never have to talk to another human…(*both laugh*)…I would probably be okay with that!!

So how did the experience go with playing that stuff live. Because once you formulated the album, did you have “the band” in mind, or did you have to go through a list of people to fill out the sound, and then, how did that stuff to you translate into the live show? Getting all of those sounds to come out of a rock band…how did that process go?

Well let me tell you, bud…(*both laugh*)…when I started putting this together and it became clear that I was going to sign with Kill Rock Stars, I talked to my booking agent Chris Rusk, and I was just like “it’s coming out on October 14th, and we need to do like a two-week tour around it,” and Chris was like “who’s ‘we’…you don’t have a band?!? (*both laugh*) What exactly is the lineup? Is it you and one other person with laptops and a light show?”

Yeah, you could totally envision that. I could see that!

Yeah, but that was never what I had my heart set on. I was like “dude, it’s supposed to be indie rock, and it’s supposed to be even more indie rock than the album sounds, and the only reason the album sounds the way it does is that I had to program beats instead of using a live drummer. Otherwise it would have been a totally different animal.” I was like “you worry about booking the tour, I’ll worry about putting the band together. I’ve never let you down, I will have something, it’ll be awesome, I’ll make you proud.” 

That is awesome. Talk about punk rock, by the way. (*both laugh*)

And mind you, the Disarmers are incessantly touring this entire time, so I have these tiny, tiny little windows at home where I’m scrambling to find players and trying to audition people. There was one such window where I held some auditions at a local studio, and I had one drummer who was really just kind of weird and talking about God and church a lot. I think he was just trying to get me to be like “hey I’m queer, and if that’s not a good fit for you that’s fine. I’m non-binary, I do a lot of work in the LGBTQ community as far as activism goes,” and as soon as I said that, he was like “yeah, I don’t think this is going to be a good fit.” That was my first time being blatantly discriminated against (*laughs*) but it’s not going to be something that holds me down. I know it’s not like I’m doing anything wrong. But it was just something else in the pile of dead ends that lead up to Mightmare as the band that it is now. The Disarmers were actually on tour with a new-to-us guitarist, Black Tallent, and we’d been out a couple times and I remember talking to the Disarmers drummer Jack Foster and I was just like “dude, I think I’m going to ask Blake if he wants to be Mightmare’s guitar player and I’m so nervous.” He was like “why are you nervous, he’s going to say yes!” And I said “I don’t know why I’m nervous…maybe I’m nervous because he IS going to say yes!” And so I asked him and he said yes and he became the first official member.

Nervous because if he said yes, then it’s like a real official “thing”?

Yes! Yeah! Like, “now I’ve gone and done it!” And then the one good result of the auditions is that my friend Ash Lopez who I’ve known for years and we’ve run in the same circles here in the Carrboro/Chapel Hill area, he auditioned on bass, and I sent him the music and asked him to learn three songs and he showed up and we played the three songs and I was like “do you want to go over any of that again?” and he was like “do you want to go over anything else, I learned everything.” I was like “well, shit, cool!” And then the final audition was Ethan Standard, who I had never met and never played with, but he was a friend of Blake’s and Blake has worked with him on various musical projects. So, basically, the Disarmers got home from a tour, and we had four days of back-to-back rehearsals with Mightmare, and then Mightmare went out for two weeks, and then the Disarmers immediately went out for two weeks. I just got home from all that. We had these four rehearsals and because the Disarmers had been on the road so relentlessly, Blake and I had maybe one or two practices together, and there’s only so much you can do with two guitars and no drums or bass. We accomplished what we could in that respect. Then the four days that we all had rehearsing together, we made minute changes to the arrangements, took crazy notes and committed stuff to memory. And I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt the anticipation and excitement that I had playing that first Mightmare show. I’ve never felt that with another band. And maybe that’s because I’m sober and more present…

I was just going to ask that!

Yeah! Sarah Shook and the Devil was an “I want to get drunk with my friends at a bar and get paid in beer” band. The Disarmers, I kinda got dragged into kicking and screaming. I was afraid of commercial success, I didn’t want any of that stuff. With Mightmare, I get to choose my own idea of success, which is not money. As long as I have enough to pay the bills and pay the people that work for me, Mightmare is what I think I referred to in another interview as my little rebellion from the Disarmers. And that tour was really, really special, and really fucking empowering, especially to go on a two-week run headlining, with no tour history, playing some pretty significant venues. Like, Empty Bottle is an institution. There were definitely some Disarmers fans there that were like “hey, I like this too!” And then there were some new faces who only know us as Mightmare, they don’t even know the Disarmers exist. 

That’s pretty amazing at this stage of a project. 

Yeah! The whole thing just feels like this continuing roller coaster of discovery and new things, and it’s a pretty great feeling. 

Does playing that stuff live influence how you may write going forward as a band, and knowing what the band can do, and do you think that for Mightmare things, you’ll still program things or do you think that it’ll turn into a full band recording thing? Or is that giving away too many secrets about what’s coming down the road? (*both laugh*)

I wish I could tell you. I will say that about a week into the Mightmare tour, I was already like “we have to record this. We have to at least run it through a board and mix it down later. We have to figure out how to capture this. Or, we just have to go into the studio for four days and cut Cruel Liars as it was meant to be.” But I’m not totally sure. I feel like moving forward, Mightmare is a band now, it’s not just me. Much as I do all the songwriting for the Disarmers, I’d probably do all the songwriting for Mightmare and then get into collaborating as the other instruments go. If that’s the case, there might be a point in the not-too-distant future where I have the Disarmers and Mightmare and those bands are live and recording as groups and I still need to do my own little thing over here.

A third project…why not?! (*both laugh*) I’m so used to seeing you in Disarmers mode playing full-body Guild or Loar guitars, but in Mightmare, did I see you playing a weird little Harmony?

Oh yeah! It’s like a 1980s Korean Harmony Rebel. I found it on Craigslist a couple years ago, and this guy was selling it for like 300 bucks, which is nothing! Somebody on this past run was just telling me that during the pandemic guitar nerds went crazy for 1980s Rebels. I don’t know why, but I love that guitar. And yeah, for Disarmers tours, I have two Loar guitars that I take out and for Mightmare I have smaller-body guitars that I can wear hire and sort of closer to my body. Another unexpected thing about Mightmare is I basically had four days to completely change the pedal setup I was using, and also every single song, every single chord is a barre chord in Mightmare. I was having a lot of pain in my hands, because in the Disarmers, there may be like one every couple songs, but it’s not an every single chord of every single song situation. So there are a lot of things that I had to relearn and tweak and figure out how to do better, and having smaller guitars that I can wear higher is a lot easier on my wrist and my hands. 

And it looks like an indie rock band! Like, seeing you with those smaller body guitars at first was jarring because you get so used to the big hollow bodies, but the “regular” and weird guitar was like “oh, this really is a totally different band!” 

Yup, lean and mean! 

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
Interview kill rock stars mightmare river hook sarah shook and the disarmers

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DS Photo Gallery: Lucero’s big night live at Boston’s Big Night Live (w/Jason Boland & The Stragglers – 11/7/23)

For the first time in just over a calendar year, Memphis’ Lucero – better known as my favorite band of the last couple of decades – made their way to the northeast corner of the country. The headlining festivities on this occasion took place Tuesday evening at the cavernous Big Night Live – better known […]

For the first time in just over a calendar year, Memphis’ Lucero – better known as my favorite band of the last couple of decades – made their way to the northeast corner of the country. The headlining festivities on this occasion took place Tuesday evening at the cavernous Big Night Live – better known as not my favorite place to see a rock show. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that with the epic stage lights and sprawling VIP area and fancy bathrooms (are you supposed to tip that guy that hands you 2.5 paper towels?!), it’s more of a “night club” than a “rock hall.” But I digress; this is a review of the show and not of the venue, so without further ado…

Jason Boland and the Stragglers kicked off the evening in fine fashion. The red-dirt country sextet (Boland on vocals and guitar, Grant Tracy on bass, Nick Gedra on fiddle, AJ Slaughter on pedal steel/lead guitar, Andrew Bair on keys and Jake Lynn on drums who was allegedly on drums but not entirely visible from my vantage points) hail from various parts of Texas and Oklahoma. They’ve released ten albums and performed hundreds of shows over the last twenty years, but prior to last week, they’d never played a show in Boston.

And so given that my home turf is not exactly known for being a hotbed for country music of the “red dirt” variety – or really of any variety that isn’t preceded by the word “bro” – and given that the swanky venue is probably a better fit for the likes of Marshmello or Deadmau5 (both of whom are performing there over the next month) I have to say I was presently surprised by the number of people filling the place, primed and ready to sing along by the time Boland et al took the stage and dove in to “A Tornado And The Fool” from their most recent album, 2021’s The Light Saw Me. The band’s 65-minute set was pretty representative of their entire catalog, with a fun little revved-up section that included “Dee Dee OD’d” and “I Guess It’s Alright To Be An Asshole” – perhaps my favorite Stragglers song – in the middle for good measure.

Shortly after 9:30pm brought the familiar sounds of Chuck Berry’s rendition of “Memphis, Tennessee,” Lucero’s walk-out music for as long as I can remember. Rather than ease their way into their portion of the evening’s festivities, the fivesome ripped into “No Roses No More,” a snarling, barn-burner from their 2001 self-titled debut record. I’ve developed a very deep appreciation for that song over the years after seeing it live so many times, but I’ve never seen it kick off a set. It has show-closer energy, particularly when the bridge wanders into dueling guitar solo territory, and so it’s an incredibly high bar for a band to set for themselves, particularly on a Tuesday night.

Oh, but don’t worry…they met or exceeded the bar at every turn. “No Roses No More” led into “Buy A Little Time,” from the band’s most recent release, Should’ve Learned By Now, which dropped earlier this year on Thirty Tigers and their own Liberty & Lament label. The band played four tracks from Should’ve Learned By Now on this night (“Macon If We Make It,” “One Last F.U.” and “Nothing’s Alright” were the others) and while they did feature a few of those tracks on last year’s jaunt up to the Northeast, this was my first time hearing them in a live setting after having ten months or so to process the album versions. It’s safe to say they fit nicely amidst a twenty-two-song set that was pretty representative of their twenty-five-year career.

Speaking of which; this year marked the 20th anniversary of the band’s seminal That Much Further West record, and the band denoted the occasion not only by remastering and repressing the record on vinyl but by playing full-album show in Baltimore a couple nights before the Boston date. As such, the show staples “Tears Don’t Matter Much” and “That Much Further West” were joined by the less frequently played “When You Decided To Leave” and the almost-never-played “Coming Home” in the set, both of which were welcome additions. It’s pretty awesome when you’ve seen a band as many times as I’ve seen Lucero and they can still break out a song you haven’t heard live before, and that was certainly the case with “Coming Home” on this night.

Couple other non-sequitur notes…

Thankfully, the lighting guy took it down a notch or four during Lucero’s set. It was darker, sure, but about 250% less seizure-inducing, so that was helpful.

Due to an unfortunate pre-tour incident involving the Gibson SG that’s been his primary gig axe of late, this run marked the return of Brian Venable’s one-of-a-kind Perkins Flying V. What a majestic creature it is.

Speaking of BNV, the man himself had his own cheering section on this particular show. They were quite vocal for most of the night. I forget where we landed on a name for them…Those Venable Bros, maybe?

“And We Fell” into “I’ll Just Fall” made me chuckle.

John C. hamming it up during the intro to “On My Way Downtown” never gets old to me, and I wish he did it more.

Speaking of never getting old, Ben’s “she had a weakness for writers and I was never that good with words anyway” continues to hit like a sledgehammer, particularly coming from arguably my favorite songwriter.

Highly underrated moment, but the show getting out at the same time as the Romeo Santos concert at the adjoining TD Garden made for a super interesting cross-section of fans pouring out onto the street at the same time. Bachata fans go all out.

Check out more photos from Lucero and Jason Boland & The Stragglers below. This tour wraps up November 18th in Lawrence, Kansas. Ben Nichols heads to Florida for a few Bikeriders Tour makeup dates next month, before Lucero regroups in Memphis for the triumphant return of their Family Christmas Party at Minglewood Hall. More details available here.

Lucero Slideshow

Jason Boland & The Stragglers Slideshow

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
big night live boston concert photography jason boland and the stragglers live music

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DS Review: Lucero reinvent their rock-and-roll roots on “Should’ve Learned By Now”

It’s weird to think of an album as being a “back to basics” record when you’re a band that has gone through as many changes in sonic direction as Lucero has over their quarter-century run, but that’s exactly where the Memphis-based quintet find themselves on their latest release, Should’ve Learned By Now (out today on […]

It’s weird to think of an album as being a “back to basics” record when you’re a band that has gone through as many changes in sonic direction as Lucero has over their quarter-century run, but that’s exactly where the Memphis-based quintet find themselves on their latest release, Should’ve Learned By Now (out today on Thirty Tigers/Liberty & Lament). The album marks the band’s eleventh full-length release – twelfth if you count The Attic Tapes, which you’re certainly allowed to do – and represents the band’s most straight-forward dare-I-say “rock and roll” record in quite some time, probably since at least Nobody’s Darlings.

The festivities get started with “One Last F.U.” which is a song that’s been floating around for the better part of the last half-decade at this point, a crowd favorite that finally made it onto a proper record. It’s a raucous barn-burner of a song, three-and-a-half minutes of four-on-the-floor rock (complete with cowbell, albeit maybe not enough) and squelchy guitars and more piss-and-vinegar in the lyrics than we’ve heard from the mouth of Ben Nichols in quite some time. More on that later.

The gas pedal stays pinned down for “Macon If We Make It,” a ripper of a tune that intertwines a literal storm outside with a figurative storm back home, a theme that returns a few songs later on the acoustic-driven ditty (am I allowed to call a song a ditty on a punk rock website?) “Raining For Weeks.” “Nothing’s Alright,” another track that quickly made a great impression when it debuted live toward the end of last year, brings with it a big, anthemic chorus. Throughout the record, Brian Venable continues to do that thing that really, only Brian Venable does, his wandering, pinch harmonic-filled guitar lines as snarly as ever, shining brightly on tracks like “One Last F.U.” and “Macon If We Make It” and personal favorites “Buy A Little Time” and the title track. The latter two continue the album’s general sonic theme of big uptempo rock songs that will quickly make their way into the setlist, to the delight of many a longtime fan from back in the band’s more raucous early days. While many of the tracks on Should’ve Learned By Now have been around a while and didn’t fit stylistically with the likes of their last record, 2021’s When You Found Me, “At The Show” is a straight-forward track that really could have been a thematic holdover from the Tennessee sessions two decades prior (or, hell, even from the Red 40 years).

That’s not to say that the album is all boilerplate up-tempo rockers. “She Leads Me Now” is a pretty, mid-tempo not-quite-ballad that actually features vocal harmonies, a rarity on a Lucero record. The aforementioned “Raining For Weeks” comes complete with a pretty piano melody that belies the track’s melancholy lyrics. “Drunken Moon” is a legitimate ballad with even more vocal harmonies (perfected by the trio of Edwards brothers from LA Edwards on the last East Coast run if you were lucky enough to catch it). As per usual, the rhythm section of Roy Berry and John C. Stubblefield provide a stable foundation for the rest of the musical structure to build off. Neither would win awards for flashiest or over-the-top playing, but that’s never been what Lucero has called for musically. With Rick Steff on keys (and again on accordion as an unexpected and welcome treat on album-closer “Time To Go Home”) providing texture and melodies and Nichols and Venable’s inimitable styles of guitar-playing, Berry and Stubblefield – both live and on record – serve as the closest thing you’ll find to guardrails in a Lucero sound.

Lyrically, Ben Nichols has made a career out of tapping into the role of barroom poet. He’s been heart-breakingly honest at times and revealed a lot of himself through tales of loves both unrequited (especially in the earlier years) and more recently, unadulterated, especially with the prominent role that the women in his life have taken over the last handful of years. And of course there have been the more character-driven songs that have spoken to the human condition and to people trying to make their respective ways through various trials and tribulations and staring down the ghosts of the consequences of their actions. On Should’ve Known By Now, Nichols seems to have also stripped away some of the imagery in his stories, keeping the context a little simpler (look, mom…curse words!) yet somehow, perhaps unintentionally, revealing more of himself in the process than meets the eye, particularly on songs like “Buy A Little Time” and “Drunken Moon.”

I’ve been dyed-in-the-wool Lucero fan for a lot of years and have traveled many, many miles to see the band and its members and I’m happy to follow them down whatever musical rabbit holes they want to venture down. You want so sing tear-jerkers about unrequited love? Check. Whiskey nights and rodeos? Check. Keyboards and horns and a traditional Memphis soul influence? Sounds good. Accordion-infused World War II songs? Let’s do it. Synthesizers and soaring guitars and post-apocalyptic retellings of Little Red Riding Hood? Absolutely. Campfire singalongs inspired by an incredibly bleak Cormac McCarthy western novel? Let’s do it. Trap-horror instrumental movie soundtracks? Sign me up. The weirded and newer the direction, the better.

And yet, I really, really enjoy Should’ve Learned By Now. There’s something about the singularity of musical focus and putting forth a no-frills rock record that results in a record that fits in the collection like a glove. Without really sounding like any previous Lucero record, it somehow encapsulates some core tenets of all of the albums that precede it in the band’s oeuvre. Once described semi-tongue-in-cheekily as “too country for punk rock and too punk rock for country,” Lucero circa 2023 probably don’t qualify as either one now, because they’ve carved out their own niche. They’re not really country or punk or Memphis soul or Americana or roots rock or whatever other labels we might want to throw at them. They’re Lucero. We really should’ve learned by now.

by Staff Writer jaystone
Tags: 
lucero memphis rock and roll should've learned by now thirty tigers

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Lucero – “Should’ve Learned By Now”

Should've Learned By Now - Lucero

Release Date: February 24, 2023 Record Label: Thirty Tigers Release Type: LP
Tags: 
liberty & lament lucero memphis thirty tigers

Lucero are back with their 11th studio album – 12th if you count The Attic Tapes. A quarter-century into their career and they’ve managed to put together probably the most stripped-down and straightforward rock-and-roll album of their careers. Pre-orders are still available here (with some pretty cool bonus items including a knife and a back patch and whiskey glasses and…whiskey!)

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers

Sarah Shook and the Disarmers formed in late 2014 and put out their first album the following year. They released two albums on Bloodshot Records, and their third full-length, Nightroamer, came out in 2022 on Thirty Tigers.

Band photo by Chad Cochran.

The Gaslight Anthem – “History Books”

"History Books" - The Gaslight Anthem

Release Date: October 27, 2023 Record Label: Thirty Tigers Release Type: LP
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The long-long-long-awaited return album from The Gaslight Anthem is finally upon us!

Entitled History Books, the album is due out October 27th on Thirty Tigers and the band’s own label. It marks not only their first studio album since 2014’s Get Hurt, but their first release after returning from hiatus as a full-time band. Pre-orders are available in a multitude of options, so get on them. In the meantime, you can watch the video for the title track below. The video was shot by longtime friend of the band Kelsey Hunter Ayres and produced by Stacy Fallon and features styling by Erica Rosamilia and the song features another special guest appearance, and so while there isn’t a pork roll or a boardwalk or a shot of The Lanes in sight, it is still so, so Jersey!

The Hold Steady – “The Price Of Progress”

The Price Of Progress - The Hold Steady

Release Date: March 31, 2023 Record Label: Thirty Tigers Release Type: LPBandcamp Link: Listen on Bandcamp
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The Hold Steady is 20 years old! Time flies when you’re having fun, but it’s still hard to believe that 2023 makes two decades of THS. Of course, we think growing out of our teenage years is reason to throw a party or two – this year will be full of Hold Steady celebrations to honor the music, positivity, and incredible community that have made the last twenty years so amazing.

First off, we are releasing our 9th studio album The Price of Progress on March 31, 2023 via Positive Jams/Thirty Tigers. Produced by Josh Kaufman and recorded over the past year, this record features 10 new THS songs, some of which we’ve been playing live in recent shows.

You can PRE-ORDER NOW, as well as check out “Sideways Skull”, the first song released from the album. The online store features all music formats (Digital, CD, Vinyl) and some brand new The Price Of Progress themed merch.

For you vinyl fans, we’ve got an exclusive, limited edition translucent green vinyl available only at THS.net along with standard vinyl.

There are three (3) additional vinyl colors available at retail only:

a) metallic gold (independent retail exclusive)
b) metallic silver (Vinyl Me, Please exclusive)
c) white (Rough Trade exclusive).

We are really proud of the record and excited for you to hear it. A great way to start year twenty!