Drive-By Truckers at Levon Helm Studios

On the title track to Welcome 2 Club XIII, Drive-By Truckers pay homage to the Muscle Shoals honky-tonk where founding members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley got their start: a concrete-floored dive lit like a disco, with the nightly promise of penny beer and truly dubious cover bands. “There were no cool bars in town and Club XIII was the best we had—but it wasn’t all that good, and our band wasn’t particularly liked there,” says Hood, referring to the vocalist/guitarists’ former band Adam’s House Cat. “From time to time the owner would throw us a Wednesday night or let us open for a hair-metal band we were a terrible fit for, and everyone would hang out outside until we were done playing. It wasn’t very funny at the time, but it’s funny to us now.” The 14th studio album from Drive-By Truckers—whose lineup also includes keyboardist/guitarist Jay Gonzalez, bassist Matt Patton, and drummer Brad Morgan—Welcome 2 Club XIII looks back on their formative years with both deadpan pragmatism and profound tenderness, instilling each song with the kind of lived-in detail that invites bittersweet reminiscence of your own misspent youth.
Produced by longtime Drive-By Truckers collaborator David Barbe and mainly recorded at his studio in Athens, Georgia, Welcome 2 Club XIII took shape over the course of three frenetic days in summer 2021—a doubly extraordinary feat considering that the band had no prior intentions of making a new album. “We had some shows coming up and decided to get together and practice, since we hadn’t even seen each other in a year and a half because of the pandemic,” Hood recalls. “We started demoing song ideas, and pretty soon we realized we had a whole record. It was all sort of magical.” Featuring background vocals from the likes of Margo Price, R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, and Mississippi-bred singer/songwriter Schaefer Llana, Welcome 2 Club XIII was recorded live with most songs cut in one or two takes, fully harnessing the band’s freewheeling energy. “For us it’s always about just getting together and having fun, but this time there was the added feeling of being set free after a long time of wondering if we’d ever get to do this again,” notes Cooley.

Arriving as the band enters its 26th year, Welcome 2 Club XIII marks a sharp departure from the trenchant commentary of The Unraveling and The New OK (both released in 2020). “All our records are political to some extent, but after making three overtly political records in a row we wanted to do something much more personal,” says Hood. A hypnotic introduction to the album’s sprawling autobiography, “The Driver” kicks off Welcome 2 Club XIII with a seven-minute-long, darkly thrilling epic punctuated with lead-heavy riffs and Llana’s unearthly vocals. “Around the same era of Club XIII, I spent a lot of time driving around late at night when I couldn’t sleep, listening to music loud and often having a beer or two,” says Hood. “Sometimes during those drives I’d have these epiphanies about what to do with my life—like listening to Tim by The Replacements not long after it came out and deciding to drop out of school to try and make this whole band thing work.”

The album’s swinging centerpiece, “Welcome 2 Club XIII” spins a sublimely gritty portrait of the spot Cooley sums up as “part disco, part honky-tonk, part place to score cheap cocaine.” With its litany of inside jokes and references to Foghat and The Jim Carroll Band, the track unfolds as a joyful piece of anti-nostalgia, a sentiment perfectly captured in its sing-along-fueled outro (sample lyric: “Our glory days did kinda suck”). Meanwhile, on “Every Single Storied Flameout,” Cooley shares a far more pensive recollection of his younger years. “I wrote that song when my son was turning 16 and going through a rough patch for a bit,” he says. “Luckily, he’s turned it around and he’s doing great now, but it was a tough time for a while. Part of my way of dealing with it was to take ownership of the example I might’ve set, in the hope of leading him out of it.” Graced with the radiant melodies of a three-piece horn section, the result is a spirited anthem merging Cooley’s unsparing self-reflection with a bit of rambling wisdom (e.g., “That part of you that feels alive is wired and can’t be severed from the damage-seeking part of you that runs it/Just don’t embrace it with a vengeance before you’ve even shaved with a razor that you bought with your own money”).

Although Welcome 2 Club XIII has its moments of real-time observation (including “Maria’s Awful Disclosures,” on which Cooley connects the dots between early-19th-century anti-immigrant agitprop and the noxious paranoia of QAnon), much of the album serves as a free-flowing coming-of-age memoir. “Cooley and I have been playing together for 37 years now,” Hood points out. “That first band might have failed miserably on a commercial level, but I’m really proud of what we did back then. It had a lot to do with who we ended up becoming.” And while Drive-By Truckers never shy away from illuminating the many shades of grief that come with getting older, Welcome 2 Club XIII ultimately embodies a certain world-weary joie de vivre—an element beautifully encapsulated in one of its final lyrics, from the softly stunning “Wilder Days”: “As the sun gets dizzy watching us as we go spinning around/I find it best to laugh at the absurdity of life above the ground/There’s no comfort in survival, but it’s still the best option that I’ve found.”

LYDIA LOVELESS

Daughter–her first album in four years–marks the triumphant return of Lydia Loveless, and documents a period of personal upheaval, including a divorce and an interstate move away from her longtime home. Left feeling unmoored and adrift, Loveless worked to redefine herself, both in her own mind and within the context of the world. Written with her characteristic candidness and razor-sharp wit, Daughter is a self-aware journey into independence.

In 2016, Loveless released her third record Real, which built on the success of her 2014 breakout Somewhere Else. The albums were embraced by critics and listeners alike, with her fanbase growing to even include some of Loveless’ heroes like Lucinda Williams and Jason Isbell. Those luminaries would become tour mates as Loveless and her band lived out of suitcases, working tirelessly in support of the releases. It was a time filled with many exciting firsts like TV appearances and performing at festivals (CBS This Morning: Saturday Sessions, Stagecoach Festival, AmericanaFest), but this strenuous time on the road wasn’t without its costs.

Loveless returned home exhausted, feeling she could no longer function at such a demanding level and longing for an overdue break. The next few months were marked by intense change: Loveless parted ways with her husband, who also played bass in her band, and moved away from Columbus, Ohio, which had been her home for years. She was left feeling disconnected from herself and everything she thought she knew. “I felt frustrated with myself for going straight from my tumultuous teen years into a marriage so that I could feel safe, and right when I was getting out of the situation, people around me were settling down and having kids. I felt lost and inexperienced,” Loveless explains. “Meanwhile the political landscape was turning even more bleak. Many men were coming around to feminism because they had just had a daughter. I’d see billboards on the side of the road imploring people not to hurt women because they were somebody’s daughter or sister or mother. And I was living as an individual for the first time, and don’t have maternal desires. My family was in turmoil so defining myself as a daughter or sister didn’t give me much comfort.”

Relocated in North Carolina, Loveless began to focus on herself. With her band hundreds of miles away, she set up a home studio to figure out how to make music in a more isolated way than ever before. The songs didn’t always come easily, but Loveless found unexpected inspiration in learning to use new techniques and gear (including analog synthesizers and a drum machine), as well as writing on piano more than guitar. The process helped her stay out of the way of her songs: “I had to make do with what I had to get the sounds I was looking for,” she says. “When melodies are coming to you frantically while you attempt to program equipment you don’t have a real understanding of, it frees you up lyrically as well. I got to really know what I wanted to say.”

Still unsure if these new songs would become an album or not, Loveless traveled to Chicago, Illinois, to record with Tom Schick (Wilco, Mavis Staples, Norah Jones) at The Loft. “For the first time I felt completely insecure about what I’d made,” she explains. “But recording brought things back into focus. I couldn’t back out of playing and explaining my songs and vision.” Her longtime accomplices–multi-instrumentalists Todd May and Jay Gasper, and drummer George Hondroulis–eventually joined her in the studio, with Loveless playing bass on a few songs for the first time in 10 years, and piano on a recording for the first time ever. The album began to take shape over three sessions and Loveless, working closely with Schick, pushed herself to chase the new ideas, sounds, and directions that make Daughter a revelation.

Throughout Daughter, the anguish, hope, regret, and even wry humor of Loveless’ self-reflective journey is palpable. The hallmarks of her music—that unmistakable voice, an incisive way with melody, and an unrelenting willingness to cast the first stone inward—are still present, but there’s also a newfound sense of space and experimentation across the album. Songs like “Love Is Not Enough” (which she calls “the closest to a political ditty I’ve been able to write thus far”) or “Wringer” and “Dead Writer” (which most directly address the fallout of her divorce) expand on Loveless’ core sound, while the title track centerpiece is one of her most meditative songs to date and finds Loveless reckoning with how her place in the world is defined, singing: “What is my body worth to you without your blood in it?” “I was talking to my friend at lunch a few days before we went into the studio about how sick I was of women only having worth if they were someone’s kid/sister/mother, not just because of being a human,” Loveless recalls. “I told her I wanted it to be the focal point of the record, but I hadn’t written it and she said something like ‘Well, you’re going to write it today and call me when you do.’ I went to practice that day and started playing it for the band. It all fell out.” On the somber “September,” the sparse, piano-led arrangement features cellist Nora Barton as well as guest vocals from Loveless’ friend Laura Jane Grace, while the haunting “Don’t Bother Mountain” is built on drum machines and keys; both illustrate an evocative, adventurous side of Loveless’ songwriting while recounting dark moments from her past. Elsewhere the atmospheric “Can’t Think” struggles with conflicting desires as it builds to a heady, cacophonous end, and the deceptively upbeat “Never” details the regret-filled fallout of a relationship over a foundation of synths (a sonic choice born out of what Loveless refers to as her “George Michael phase”).

In the end, Daughter captures Loveless at her fiery best, with her songwriting stronger and exhibiting an even keener insight than ever. The album showcases Loveless’ willingness to push beyond her musical and lyrical comfort zones to find a previously untapped sense of self. “I took a break because I was exhausted. But it was also out of the necessity of trying to learn who I was,” Loveless says. “I spent the last 10 years as a ‘growing up on the farm country gal,’ and felt like I needed to think about who I am now.”

Daughter is Loveless’ first release on her own label, Honey, You’re Gonna Be Late Records.