PATTERSON HOOD Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood\u2019s fourth solo album and first in over 12 years, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams sees the veteran singer, guitarist, and songwriter exploring his youth and young manhood in a collection unlike anything in his ever-evolving catalogue. A baroque American song cycle spanning the time between early childhood and leaving his rural hometown in search of his musical dreams, the album gathers songs that have amassed over the remarkably prolific songwriter\u2019s career, many of which provided him with distraction and creative sustenance during lockdown, others which have resided among his notebooks for years. \u201cThis record has all these kinds of unintended themes,\u201d Hood says. \u201cIt\u2019s all subconscious, because I didn\u2019t really set out with an agenda, writing-wise. It really just kind of occurred to me when I was actually putting it all together, just how much it seems to have a theme to it.\u201d The dozen years since his last extracurricular outing, 2012\u2019s Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance, had seen Hood accumulate a cache of material which did not quite fit into the Drive-By Truckers canon, songs which he set aside for \u201cif and when\u201d he got around to another solo project. Kept off the road during the 2020 lockdown, he found himself recording demos in his Portland, OR attic, without a clear plan but thinking \u201cmaybe this might be worth pursuing at some point.\u201d Hood had moved to Portland with his family in 2013 and swiftly found a place among the Rose City\u2019s thriving music scene, including a friendship forged with producer\/musician Chris Funk (The Decemberists). Having long discussed collaborating, in 2023 the two artists\u2019 typically stacked calendars finally allowed them the opportunity to team up and they set to work recording what Hood intended to be \u201ca bigger departure\u201d from Drive-By Truckers and his previous solo efforts than ever before. \u201cThe band has been in such a good place that I hadn\u2019t really thought in terms of doing anything outside of the Truckers anytime soon,\u201d Hood says. \u201cI decided if I ever was going to do another solo record, I wanted it to be pretty different than the band, as different as it can be.\u201d Hood further took the occasion to explore sounds outside the boundaries and obligations of his day job, deviating from Drive-By Truckers\u2019 traditionally guitar-driven palette to craft richly textured arrangements marked by the inclusion of strings, woodwinds, and vintage analog synthesizers. With its powerful textural clarity and Hood\u2019s literary strengths at the fore, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams emerges as a staggering investigation into how time can shed light on the recesses of memory, revealing this exceptionally gifted songwriter\u2019s resolute inclination to look back through the golden haze to grapple with the darkness and secret truths that perhaps weren\u2019t understood or reckoned with at the time. As he has throughout his career \u2013 from Drive-By Truckers\u2019 ceaseless investigation into American values and culture to his solo body of work\u2019s autobiographical meditations \u2013 Exploding Trees and Airplane Screams sees Patterson Hood once again stripping away the facade of things to get to the core, lifting up life\u2019s rock to see what lies underneath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PATTERSON HOOD Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood\u2019s fourth solo album and first in over 12 years, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams sees the veteran singer, guitarist, and songwriter exploring his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":91765,"template":"","meta":{"_tribe_events_status":"","_tribe_events_status_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[],"tribe_events_cat":[],"class_list":["post-91763","tribe_events","type-tribe_events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n