It is never easy to post about things like albums (new or old) and shows when bombs are falling, people are dying, and the future is incredibly precarious and uncertain. But perhaps there is no better time for just such a post. As we have had to say all too often in the last few years, we all need the beauty and connection of music in challenging times (it would be nice if there were fewer of these), especially from artists like the ones we feature here, ranging from those protesting and calling out the ills of the world to those just looking to have a good time, even if their hearts may break along the way. We hope everyone in your world is staying safe and can take comfort in the records and artists we are featuring in this post; they are certainly keeping us sane, to the extent that’s possible for Old Guys.
New Album: World’s Gone Wrong by Lucinda Williams. You know that feeling when you’ve had enough? When you’ve gone full Popeye? You’ve had all you can stand, and you can’t stand no more. And then you pour an entire can of spinach down your gullet, immediately grow 40 pounds of muscle, and beat the ever-loving snot out of whoever or whatever you’ve had enough of. Metaphorically speaking, of course. This never happens in real life, as far as I can tell. No one ever lets you pay them Tuesday for a hamburger today.
Bob Mould went full Popeye in 2020. As did Adam Weiner of Low Cut Connie last year. Bruce Springsteen – historically no stranger to writing songs about social issues – famously did so recently in response to the federal assault on Minneapolis. Each in their own way, these musicians (like many others before them) devoured that can of spinach and directed their musical muscle and fury and creative energy into a gesture that is both noble and difficult to pull off – the protest song. When done well, a protest song can be melodic and poetic and memorable and inspiring and meaningful. When done poorly, it can feel rushed and cringy and hacky and maybe a little too on-the-nose. A good protest song has the potential to live forever. A lesser protest song is like a new car being driven off the lot – immediately gratifying but diminished value over time.
(I haven’t even gotten to the protest song elephant in the room that is Jesse Welles. I’ve made my feelings about Jesse Welles clear. Not a fan. A year ago, no one knew who Jesse Welles was. Now, Jesse Welles has sold out DC’s 9:30 Club. Because of course he did. DC – I can say this as a current and longtime resident of the city – is filled with people who follow liberal politics and love having their worldview validated. Look, I, too, follow liberal politics and love having my worldview validated. Jesse Welles fans, I am one of you. But we all draw our lines. I draw mine at spending money to stand in a packed club to hear Bluesky posts sung nasally over melody-free strumming.)
If a protest song is tough to do well, what’s the degree of difficulty on a protest album? Pretty high, right? That was the task ahead of Lucinda Williams when putting together the songs for her latest album, World’s Gone Wrong.
World’s Gone Wrong is Williams’ 16th studio album and arrives six years after she suffered a stroke that still hinders her ability to play guitar. It addresses our political moment without getting preachy or resorting to references destined to be dated sooner than later. Williams opts for stories over slogans, insight over righteousness, and when it comes to the music, creativity and variety over safety and blandness.
Williams jumps right into her frustrations on track one, “The World’s Gone Wrong,” featuring country singer Brittney Spencer (one of several guests contributing to the album). But instead of taking the easy way out and running down a laundry list of complaints, Williams – like Springsteen circa “Born in the USA” or Warren Zevon’s “The Factory” – tells the story of a couple trying to get by. She highlights their jobs of nurse and cars salesman, and paints a complex picture of difficulty and optimism (“Workin’ long hours is the devil’s curse / Things are getting’ tight but it could be worse”). Williams also notes in this story how media oversaturation and disinformation takes its toll on people just trying to get by (“Nothing makes sense and she gets confused / Between what is false and what is true”).
Williams gets dark on “Something’s Gotta Give.” She sings of a heaviness, of pain. “Too much rain, the levee’s gonna break.” The guitar riff matches the lyrics, almost like the song is stalking you, lurking just around the corner. “How Much Did You Get for Your Soul?” is a danceable rambling bar rocker that asks a question a lot of us have been asking for some time. Williams doesn’t have the answer, but with her experience she has understanding (“The devil is a master salesman / You weren’t so hard to convince”).
“Low Life” was co-written with the members of Big Thief. It comes through first in the music, which has the feel of a pre-Double Indemnity Big Thief song beefed up with Williams’ vocals. A little less opaque than I expect from Big Thief lyrics, Adrienne Lenker and friends were still the right collaborators for this song, which describes a respite from the world that features “Slim Harpo on the jukebox” and “a place where they don’t know my face and the bartender makes good hurricanes.” It’s refreshing that on a self-professed protest album the only real name-drop is Dr. John.
The great Mavis Staples joins Williams for a cover of Bob Marley’s “So Much Trouble in the World,” presenting itself like a warning from two women of two different backgrounds, both of whom have seen “trouble” before. “Black Tears” is a great Delta blues-inspired track and, fittingly, Williams’ acknowledgement that the difficulties we experience now are hardly new (“Four hundred years is long enough / How long will they rain down?”). “Punchline” posits that we all might just be part of the setup to a long-forgotten ecclesiastical joke.
“We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around,” featuring Norah Jones, ends the album on a much-needed rallying note and is thankfully more of an actual song than a built-in chant for protest marches (though it wouldn’t be out of place there too). The same can’t be said for “Freedom Speaks,” the tamest and weakest song on the album. The music on that track doesn’t really stand out as anything beyond VH1-core and the lyrics come off as if they were written to soundtrack an ActBlue video.
As I think I made clear earlier, I have some issues with a certain segment of modern protest music. It would be too much to expect everything to be “This Land is Your Land” or “The Times They Are a-Changin’” or “Masters of War.” Even at the height of ‘60s protest music, it’s fair to say that a good number of the artists were less Bob Dylan and more Country Joe & the Fish. The best protest songs endure because their messages are universal. This includes Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” which literally dates itself right at the start, but becomes a cross-generational anthem because of… well… everything that follows. Calling it “a number, another summer” acknowledged that, sadly, there was nothing unique to the turmoil of 1989.
The difference now, of course, is social media. In prior decades, you could drop an incredibly unsubtle “Whoopee! We’re all gonna die!” into a Vietnam protest song or compare privileged American youth with Cambodian genocide and sound original. But now it’s far too easy for a protest song, especially one that directly name-checks newsworthy figures and events, to sound like the latest TikTok video or Bluesky post, especially if the singer fails to put as much thought into the music as the message. That’s how a protest song turns into the new car driving off the lot.
Lucinda Williams largely avoided that trap on World’s Gone Wrong, first by crafting a rock album that happens to be about protest. It’s an enjoyable collection of roots rock that has strong words for where we are and where we might be going. Williams is a skilled storyteller and she is adept at using that ability to get her point across.
Williams thankfully also doesn’t name names, thereby creating an album that clearly reflects the frustrations of the moment but is also evergreen. This is an album that can be played when we’ve moved past this current struggle and on to the next one. Because, unfortunately, there’s always a next one. Remember to stock up on spinach. (Brian)
Album from an upcoming/recent show: The Refrigerator by Remember Sports. In 2024, I made a conscious decision to start following new music again, and my family had resigned itself to having the house constantly bathed in the sounds of female-fronted, guitar-edged rock music (Charley Bliss, Illuminati Hotties, The Beths, Momma, etc.). One fateful day, the family went for lunch at Five Guys, which generally plays a ‘history-of-rock-in-100-minutes’ type of playlist. But this day, there was something different, and my wife must have noticed as I cocked my head like a labrador to listen - “Is this one of your new bands?” she said. “No.” I replied, “but it should be.” Shazam! The song was Reality TV by Remember Sports, and digging in led me to 2 albums (Sunchokes and All of Something) that they wrote and recorded just as they graduated from Kenyon College around 2015. Focused on jangling guitar chords, frantic beats, and Carmen Perry’s unapologetically strong vocal presence, they were simple arrangements clearly calibrated for a high energy live performance. I was hooked but assumed I had missed a chance to see them in person.
First twist - Last spring they played a handful of live shows in the east, despite their last album dating from 2021. Alas, another twist - the shows near me were in mid-April - spring break for our Maryland schools - and we had travel plans. That was heartbreaking - until a new single appeared on streaming last fall, with a graphic announcing a full album due in February of 2026. I dared hope, and yes! a support tour was announced, and they are even coming to DC on April 1st! But, the final, cruel twist - spring break is two weeks earlier this year and our family will again be on the road. Arg. But I lied a little bit - the final twist is that this year’s tour has a 2nd date in Philly, and my wife and I will be making the 2 hour trek to finally catch them there on May 7th.
Their new release, The Refrigerator, continues an evolution and expansion of their sound that started with 2021’s Like a Stone. They’re pushing the boundaries of their sound outwards and experimenting with genres. Jack Washburn’s guitar playing is more confident and experimental than last time around, and he’s featured more here, giving a better balance to the sound and more things to listen for. The production and sound on this album is also grade A (especially compared to their early uncut gems), so you can clearly hear all the instruments and the interplay among them. But the core is still Carmen Perry’s songwriting and vocals. She’s confident and not afraid to reach for notes at both limits; she’s dynamically evocative from whispered quiet notes to near-screams. Her vocal approach propels the band with fearless, determined energy even in mid-tempo numbers.
With her subtle southern drawl and fashionable pitch breaks fronting occasionally feedback-y heavy guitars, some comparison can be made to Karly Hartzman and Wednesday. But while Wednesday’s shifts from americana to noise rock can be jarring from one song to the next, in The Refrigerator, Remember Sports has a subtler hand on the knob as they tweak their sound just enough to dip into the territory of power pop, alt country, grunge, indie rock, noise, punk and even a little Irish folk.
Album opener and lead single “Across the Line” channels classic southern rock, complete with a melodic guitar solo (but thankfully without cowbell), feeling much more well-mannered and sophisticated than their early music. But it ends with a bit of chaotic noise that hints they haven’t ditched their punk roots...
... and then “Bug” busts down the door like Fun Bobby coming back to town.
This is the track that encapsulates Remember Sports’s modern sound and improved production values, combining their early-era power pop energy with more careful songcraft and creativity. After a quick-hitting chromatic intro riff, the beat sets off at a run with power chords and a simple melodic verse, adding a vocal harmony the 2nd time through. The first chorus is expected here, and it kind of is, but the lyrics are replaced with multiple fuzzed-out guitar lead lines, which linger to noodle over the top of third verse, which is just the vocals and rhythm section this time. That relative quiet is a set up for the climax of the 4th verse: the drums add an attention-getting accent that sounds like a cross between a wood block and a sound-effects thunder sheet, the vocals ramp up intensity, and the guitars come back to life as a preamble to the cathartic wailing chorus, (”I’d get you out of my head if I knew how to/Say there’s a reason I keep comin’ back to you”) where the lead guitar provides counterpoint. Then the energy ebbs with a bass-only verse, only to launch into a modulated bridge with a wicked frantic guitar solo. The finale is a repeat of the chorus that pounds harder and harder until a sudden end that leaves you wanting more. What a song.
“Thumb” goes hard in the punk lane, including a down-right screamed final chorus. You can feel how much of herself Perry is putting into this, but to underline it, the vocal track includes an audible sigh of relief and exhaustion after the final unresolved cadence.
From here, there’s more experimenting with different styles. “Selfish” features an REM-like bass-line and harmonies, and the acoustic guitar support of indie rock. “Ghost” starts with a bagpipe drone, a languid trippy beat, and has some of Perry’s most technical and melodic singing. It all leads into a coda of fiddle improv that feels like sitting around a pub table in Ireland, where everyone has brought their instruments to jam.
As the album title hints, the songwriting covers some of the mundane aspects of life. But Perry’s writing also seems informed by her work on last year’s more introspective and personal solo album - sometimes even in the same line: “All we had were dreams. I took a bite of my zucchini and we did the math.” (”Zucchini”)
Self-doubts resurface repeatedly, as in “Fridge” (”28 years old and I’m still scared like a little kid”) and “Roadkill” - “What are we gonna do when you find out I’m not worth it? Was I ever enough? I was never enough to make it stick with you.” In these slower, atmospheric numbers, she allows herself to sing gently and sweetly. But at the end of Roadkill, it’s contrasted with a thumping beat and noodling guitar noise that I’m not sure entirely work.
“Cut Fruit,” the 3rd single, jumps into post-grunge with layered guitars, catchy hooks and chorus and lets Perry do some more welcome screaming. “Yowie” is full-on power pop with a cleaner sound and optimistic message. The closer, “Nevermind” leans fully alt-country, with equal parts jangle and twang.
You get the idea. By tinkering with different genres and production effects, but not losing their core sound, Remember Sports has created an album with a lot of re-listenability. Tied through it all is Perry’s gift for a memorable melody and incisive lyrics. And now the improved musicianship of the rest of the band, as well as great production values, allow them to shine equally when their turn comes in the spotlight. They’ve never sounded better as a band, and I urge you all to go check them out when their spring tour brings them to your city! (Dave)
Album being rediscovered (at least 10 years old): Too Far to Care by the Old 97s. What’s so Great about the Barrier Reef? Just about everything, it turns out, as I was fortunate enough to discover a trip to Australia last November (but that’s probably for another post). That trip got me thinking about many things, but among them was this eternal question from the Old 97s and their classic album Too Far to Care, which is (somehow) nearing its 30th anniversary.
Alt-country has been having a renaissance in the last couple of years, as we have written about extensively on this site, and bands like Uncle Tupelo, Songs: Ohia, Drive-By Truckers, the Jayhawks, the Bottlerockets, and the like have gotten new life and, to a degree, respect. From my personal perspective, I had largely given up on the genre after the late 90s, and it’s only been the strength of Wednesday/MJ Lenderman (not exactly alt-country, of course), Fust, Lily Seabird, Ryan Davis, Maggie Rogers, SG Goodman, and so many others that has drawn me back.
The Old 97s cut an unusual mold in the world of alt-country in the 90s and into the 00s. Most of the bands and artists above were neither particularly focused on tales of dating/hooking up, relationships, and drinking in the way that the Old 97s were, nor did they have anywhere near the same energy or vitality. Frankly, like much of country music, the songs of the core of alt-country tended to the depressing and overwrought, even when they were loud and hard-driving. When you were at an Uncle Tupelo or Jason Molina or Jayhawks show, you weren’t likely to be laughing too much at a show, or even smiling, really (other than because you were amazed at the musicianship).
Rhett Miller was different, or at least he seemed that way to me. Confident, brash, funny, and attractive, yet also vulnerable, thoughtful, and empathetic. He was writing songs that had their core themes and energy as much in Top 40 radio as in Nashville but completely transformed through the Texas lens of Western swing, punk, 90s alternative, and more traditional country. It was exciting and somewhat unexpected, as they were a band that made you rethink a genre (or genres) you thought you had figured out. He certainly wrote his share of songs about drinking, depression, breakup, uncertain futures, dead-end towns - but they didn’t (and still don’t) sound or feel in the same lane as the others of their era.
As such, I feel like the Old 97s are often left out of the conversation of the bands that made the current rise of alt-country possible. Perhaps because, unlike those other artists, they’ve been a steady presence, with no major gaps, and charting a steady and consistent course. Their fanbase has remained devoted but never become massive or reached “cult” status. And I think that’s too bad because I certainly hear their influence in the songwriting in the likes of MJ Lenderman, Ryan Davis, and even Florry.
Too Far to Care was their third studio record (it’s the one Apple Music says is “essential”), their first on a major label (Elektra), and it checked all the boxes: energetic, vulnerable, funny, and just something different. And it feels that way from the very first notes. A uniquely swinging punk country guitar riff, joined quickly by a galloping drumbeat that almost reminds you of a late 50s skiffle song but infused with a bravado and energy that brought those early rock-n-roll influencing sounds into the modern age. And you’re also thrust immediately into Miller’s songwriting genius: “I’ve got a timebomb/In my mind, Mom/I hear it ticking but I don’t know why/I call the police, but they don’t like me/I hear ‘em whispering when I walk by.” Clever rhyme scheme, you know precisely who the character is, and it’s perfectly connected to the music underneath, all in the first 30 seconds. Later, as we learn more about how badly this stick-legged girl named Celeste is tearing apart our (anti-?)hero, he sings “She’s gonna kill me, and I don’t mean softly,” which would be a great line at any time, but especially almost exactly a year after the Fugees’ mega-hit remake of “Killing Me Softly” took off on the charts.
“Timebomb” leads to “Barrier Reef,” which replaces the punk angle with a bluesy, classic rock feel and again tells the story of Rhett in a bar looking to hook up, finds a girl who can roll with his pick-up lines (“So I sidled up beside her, settled down and shouted, ‘Hi there’/My name’s Stewart Ransom Miller, I’m a serial lady-killer/She said, “I’m already dead,” that’s exactly what she said”). But then when it comes times for them to hook up, he’s too drunk, leading to the memorable chorus (“What’s so great about the Barrier Reef?/What’s so fine about art?/What’s so good about a Good Times Van/When you’re working on a broken/Working on a broken/Working on a broken man?”). It is a deft feat of songwriting to combine the glib and even slightly cynical approach of the quasi-rhetorical questions to the core of the song, i.e. that this slick, handsome guy who can so easily pick up a woman in a bar is quite broken on the inside, all on top of a musical arrangement that gives you the impression that he absolutely was able to follow through on that pick-up line. Big, looping, honky-tonk guitar riffs, drumlines that clearly use the entire kit, and a kicking second guitar line during the chorus and solo/bridge. You’re having way too much fun to realize this whole thing fell apart on him?
“Broadway” stays in the same basic tempo as “Barrier Reef” and tells the story of Miller being in New York during their Elektra negotiations and realizing how out of place he feels, both because of the cost (“In a hotel room that costs as much as my apartment/I can watch the working class go down”) and the impersonal. “Salome” leans toward a ballad and bemoans yet another woman who has broken Miller’s heart.
“W. Tx. Teardrops” turns the style back to a Western swing shuffle and features bass player Murry Hammond on the vocals, with a fantastic performance. His voice is not nearly as full or as confident as Miller’s, but in this song, he finds a way to come close to matching the lyrical wit and empathy that Rhett can bring while constructing a banger of a tune about a relationship he left behind for what he thought might be greener pastures (“I was happier than I’d ever been/In my El Paso home/But I thought about the woman/Whom I left to roam the land/And I cried so much/It dug a rut they call the Rio Grande”).
“Melt Show,” “Niteclub,” and “House That Used to Be” remain favorites of the songs with faster tempos and bigger sounds, each finding Miller dealing with a break-up or disappointment. “Big Brown Eyes” is a remake from their previous album, with the band able to build up the sounds of a nearly perfect ode, with some incredible writing (“I’m calling time and temperature just for some company” and “You made a big impression for a girl of your size/Now I can't get by without you and your big brown eyes”) and incredible catchy riff. Even the songs that feel a bit less memorable, e.g. “Streets of Where I’m From,” have lines like “The streets of where I’m from are paved with hearts instead of gold” that make you wonder how they hadn’t been sung before. Put another way, when the album closer “Four Leaf Clover” features Exene Cervenka, one of the vocalists in porto-alt country band X, and sounds like it comes from an X B-side but somehow is one of the weaker tracks, you know the album is a keeper.
The record is also a journey, somewhat literally. They reference Chicago, New York, New Mexico, California, and all over West Texas. And it’s also a journey emotionally, as I’ve noted, from some triumphs to a range of almosts, couldabeens, and shouldabeens. But unlike Miller’s exploits on the album, the band has stayed the course and found success on the journey, releasing its 13th album in 2024 (there’s even a holiday record and Johnny Cash cover record thrown in there), and is now on tour (they’ll be at the 930 Club in DC in April). Rhett Miller has released seven solo records, Murry Hammond has released a couple as well. I admittedly lost interest in the band when I lost interest in the genre, which as I’ve said, probably wasn’t fair given how they sat just outside it. But it’s been a thrill to go back to this, especially now knowing how Great the Barrier Reef really is. (Brad)
Love Old 97s and Too Far To Care is a classic.