The latest single from the Drive By Truckers upcoming album ‘The Unraveling‘ (which is, by the by, totally superb) is ‘Thought and Prayers‘ a song that is powerful in its direct opposition to indiscriminate gun killing. And more than that, there’s a lashing of anger reserved for the powerless powerful who wring their hands, say “so sad” and finish off by stating that all the victims are in their “Thoughts and prayers“. Lot of good that’s doing, the Drive By Truckers point out.
It’s a song that continues a more directly political slant from The Drive By Truckers, and that’s a theme that carries on into the full album, the first new release in three years. Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood both spent much of the time battling writer’s block. “How do you put these day to day things we’re all living through into the form of a song that we (much less anybody else) would ever want to listen to?” says Hood. “How do you write about the daily absurdities when you can’t even wrap your head around them in the first place? I think our response was to focus at the core emotional level. More heart and less cerebral perhaps.” And ‘Thoughts and Prayers‘ does cut right to the heart of the matter – whether pointing out the blindingly obvious in unarguable terms actually qualifies as being less cerebral we’re not sure – but it makes the case and there’s no logical counter argument.
