Drive-by Truckers dropped a surprise album last week. It’s their second of 2020, and another example of how miserable times beget wonderful tunes.

How do the new songs compare to the Truckers’ canon? I don’t know yet. I digest music slower than most. But I’ll be listening to hear which of the new tracks join this list. (My money’s on “Sarah’s Flame” and “Watching the Orange Clouds.”)

Townies drink. They carry beer cans like college students carry Hydroflasks. But some get into the harder stuff. This is a post by and for townies, titans, transients, and tramps who enjoy or want to learn more about spirits.

Country songs tell great stories. Usually about poor white people living in a sucky present (“There’s a Tear in my Beer”) or an idealized past (“My Old Kentucky Home”). But from its inception, country musicians have jammed cultural codes. The first country stars were a pair of working women from Appalachia (The Carter Family) and a tuberculosis-ridden yodelin’ brakeman from Mississippi (Jimmie Rodgers). The sound of the music has changed since Fiddlin’ John Carson recorded “The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane,” but country musicians have never stopped singing about the struggle, the beauty, the sorrow, and the redemption of everyday life.

I am no fan of abstract art. I like paintings to look like something, movies to have a plot, and song lyrics to make sense. Which may be why I love these songs…

I guess you could call Hum a one-hit-wonder band. “Stars” was a moderate hit in the mid-90s, and then a bunch of people briefly remembered the song when it was in some car commercial years later. And that’s about it. Shortly after releasing 1998’s Downward is Heavenward album, the band broke up and went their own ways to have lives, raise kids, own bars, etc. And from then on out, telling someone that you’re a Hum fan was usually met with a blank stare.

But the story of Hum radically understates how important this band was, both to the rock music scene and to me personally. Hum debuted in 1993 with their album Electra 2000. It’s brash, loud, raucous, and a raw recording. It’s still a great listen today, but I think most Hum fans agree that Electra 2000 was just hinting at what would come next.

The world, the United States especially, is not in a good place right now. Too many are sick, unemployed, or feel pinned to the ground with some asshole’s knee pressed against the back of their neck. Tucson is literally on fire.

This post pays tribute to the intellectual roots of this flaming dungheap by discussing some of the thinkers who helped get us here. The scholars I discuss were brilliant, original, big-picture thinkers. They were hugely influential, but catastrophically wrong. Wrong either empirically (i.e., their ideas have been falsified) or morally (i.e., their ideas have led to widespread death and suffering). To be clear: I am not a moral relativist. I believe that death and suffering are bad. Some on this list do not share this moral outlook. Perhaps it is unfair to judge scholars by a different moral standard than they themselves held, but this is my blog. And on my blog, death and suffering are worse outcomes than decadence, class injustice, or wounding somebody’s honor.

One final disclaimer. I am not an expert on these scholars. My thoughts would not pass review in a prestigious academic journal. But this is not a prestigious academic journal. It is a music blog loosely related to townie parties.

Now that concerts are cancelled, I can’t think of anything that excites my ears more than a new Jason Isbell album. On Friday, Isbell released Reunions, his 10th studio album (not counting his Drive-by Truckers contributions would be like rejecting money from the tooth fairy).

My expectations for Reunions were high. Let me show you why…

April 2020 was sucky beyond comprehension, but it brought two music releases that are further depleting our country’s precarious toilet paper supply. Fiona Apple’s new album is every bit as good as Pitchfork , Rolling Stone, Time, NPR, the New York Times, and Paste say it is. Fetch the Bolt Cutters if you’re starting to feel like you’ve been here too long.

This post is about the other release that’s been bouncing around my cortices the last two weeks: “Ghosts of America” by the aptly named Sincere Gifts. Sincere Gifts is the latest project by one of my favorite musicians, and people, Nick Byron Campbell. Last week, Nick teamed up with estranged collaborator Ben Wigler to drop a scathing little jingle, Ghosts of America, that I can only describe as demon Americana.

In honor of his new release, this week’s post revisits my 10 favorite songs that Nick has written (or co-written) in his chameleonic, under-appreciated career.

What was the best year for popular music? Now that concerts are indefinitely cancelled, every year before 2020 is starting to look pretty good by comparison. But some were better than others. Here are the years that we like the best.

In honor of Pete’s new book, Shtick to Business, arriving April Fool’s Day, I’ve put together a list of my ten favorite non-fiction books. Hopefully some good reading will help you endure social distancing.

In our last post, you got to read about Caleb’s favorite albums from the past decade. Now it’s Adam’s turn…

Now that the firework smoke and resolutions from the New Year have safely floated into the ether, it’s time for another “Best of the Decade” list. The 2010s were an amazing decade to be a music fan. Smartphones and streaming services like Spotify made it easier and cheaper to listen to anything, anytime, anywhere. I listened to so much great music in the past 10 years, it was tough for me to narrow this list down to only 50 albums.

If recording artists could apply for tenure, like university professors, who would have the strongest application?

Universities award tenure based (mostly) on the quality and quantity of research that the professor publishes over a five or six-year period. Listeners could similarly award tenure to musicians based on the quality and quantity of music they release in a similar time period.

James Brown sang “It’s a man’s world.” There is still far too much truth in these words in far too many board rooms, bed rooms, and oval offices. But not in music. In every genre from pop (Beyoncé, Lizzo, Lana Del Rey, Billie Eilish) to country (Highwomen, Ashley McBride, Pistol Annies), hip hop (Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, Megan Thee Stallion) to rock (Sheer Mag, Jenny Lewis, Sharon Van Etten), artsy (St. Vincent, Weyes Blood, Nilüfer Yanya) to folksy (Big Thief, First Aid Kit, Courtney Marie Andrews) to soulful (Solange, Janelle Monea, Brittany Howard), women have dominated my Spotify account.

Does the Interweb really need another blog?

Of course not.

Why, you may reasonably ask, is an amateur rock band starting one?

We have our reasons:

1. It’s not you, it’s me. At least one of us likes writing.

2. We like sharing music, and we can cover more songs in a blog than Caleb is capable of playing on guitar.