The unexpected songs impress most on Hood’s fourth solo album. It’s not DBT, but it is an intriguing look at another side of an established name.
For his first solo album in 12 years Patterson Hood has clearly decided to allow a different side of his musical vision out for air. Opening song ‘Exploding Trees’ is a piano-led recollection of a natural disaster in his Alabama home state 30 years ago. This seems to be all about taking Hood away from his Drive By Truckers comfort zone. on ‘A Werewolf and a Girl’ he reaches for a difficult key with his singing to match verses with Lydia Loveless, who sounds effortless on a song of first love. A Saxophone bubbles up between the vocals like a foghorn warning of dangerous rocks ahead.
‘The Forks of Cypress’ is another duet, this time with Katie Crutchfield, Waxahatchee. And she is just a part of the cast of friends and colleagues including producer Chris Funk, Steve Berlin, Stuart Bogie and David Barbe, as well as Truckers Brad Morgan, and Jay Gonzalez. ‘The Forks of Cypress’ is the first sign of any guitar, 3 songs in, but it also well away from what we expect to Hood’s playing to sound like.
‘Miss Coldiron’s Oldsmobile’ is an acoustic tune which feels like Hood recalling earlier times, with a series of vignettes about characters presumably seen during his Muscle Shoals childhood. ‘The Pool House’ is something unexpected, with cinematic swooping strings and woodwinds and a flute solo to take you out into the first song which has any connection to Hood’s day job. ‘The Van Pelt Parties’ features North Carolina band Wednesday on the first true rock song here. Being back on more familiar ground may be comforting for the DBT fan hoping for the mixture they know and love. But it’s the unusual, like ‘The Pool House’ and ‘Last Hope’ with more Saxophone which impress most. The almost Avant Garde ‘At Safe Distance’ is one of the most effective of the atmospheric songs with 5 minutes passing in a blink as you get swept away by the sheets of sound. ‘Airplane Screams’ returns to the filmic strings and a brief reappearance of stronger guitar sounds on a tune for which the term “anthemic” was created. The closing song ‘Pinocchio’ is lighter musically but keeps to the darker tone lyrically.
The unusual artwork for ‘Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams’ is by Frances Thrasher, an artist from Athens, Georgia. “She recently put up a show called Heaven4TheYoung that really blew me away,” says Hood. “I was especially moved by one painting in the series, and she was kind enough to let me use it for the cover. I honestly didn’t have a second choice.”
He plans to tour the album in the US later this year and will include his effective if rudimentary piano playing. “I’m putting together a kind of stripped-down band so we can go do this record right. Now the challenge to see if I can pull off a few of the songs on piano live. There’s nothing but good to come from it. I think good has come from each of my solo records, they each made me better at what I do in various different ways.”
If you arrive at this album expecting Drive By Truckers under a different label, then you will go away disappointed. If you come to it hoping to hear what else Patterson Hood has to offer beyond his regular band, then this is a genuinely exciting experience.
