Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance Thread

[Zip City]

untold pretties would be a great instrumental track

[Smitty]

untold pretties would be a great instrumental track

It's better with the words, IMO. The instrumental is the b-side to "After It's Gone".

[Tyler]

untold pretties would be a great instrumental track

He actually played it that way on the Downtown Rumblers tour.

This is the one recording I could find:
http://ia601204.us.archive.org/14/items ... ack-13.mp3

[lajakesdad]

OK I tried to find this album all day. I drove by as couple shops and one shop was gone. The other didn't have it. I came home and went online and came up with no options near my house. Not even a CD. I live in southern California, WTF?? I'm ordering the vinyl online.

[bovine knievel]

untold pretties would be a great instrumental track

It's better with the words, IMO. The instrumental is the b-side to "After It's Gone".

also, included in the 10 bonus tracks

[Zip City]

Days of Graduation and World of Hurt are the only spoken word tracks I can listen to regularly

[linkous]

I am not a fan of spoken word songs, even those by PH. However I love (untold pretties) and that might just be because PH seems to "rush it" as seems to be the criticism on here. I also don't have a lot of time for Mercy Buckets, I'm obviously a bad person.

The first three songs on HLRitD are amazing, as good an opening salvo by any songwriter in the last decade. I don't think there is a bad song on this record, and after a dozen or so plays would recommend that anybody who is underwhelmed or disappointed should stick with it, you wont be disappointed. PH is the best storyteller songwriter out there.

[Jonicont]

UNTOLD PRETTIES (INSTRUMENTAL)

[Rocky]

I assumed Cooley was playing the banjo but I didn't know for sure. Is it true?

My favorite tracks in order are After The Damage, Come Back Little Star then Disappear (which I heard him play solo in Richmond in June.)

[Duke Silver]

Early thoughts: this one's gonna be a grower (in a good way, because I like it quite a bit already); love the vibe/atmosphere/whatever you call it; love the instrumentation/choice of instruments/arrangements/etc; production sounds great as usual; as a whole it feels like Patterson's most fully realized piece of work so far; looking forward to going for a long, solo drive with it.

[Tequila Cowboy]

I assumed Cooley was playing the banjo but I didn't know for sure. Is it true?

Yep.

[uncle rickey]

Did the official pre-order and the vinyl arrived today! Not bad. Will be a nice soundtrack for my work-at-home day here.

[RolanK]

Early thoughts: this one's gonna be a grower (in a good way, because I like it quite a bit already); love the vibe/atmosphere/whatever you call it; love the instrumentation/choice of instruments/arrangements/etc; production sounds great as usual; as a whole it feels like Patterson's most fully realized piece of work so far; looking forward to going for a long, solo drive with it.

This!

Love the songs. Love the singing and the playing of the individual musicians. Love the atmosphere, it is going to suit my Norwegian melancholy when the autumn sets in in a few weeks.

[Have to learn how to play pedal-steel]

[The Avon Lady]

Not sure if it's been mentioned - but the Oxford American Album Review also has the album streaming on line complete with song introductions from Patterson.

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2012/sep/11/album-review-patterson-hood/

[blackwll]

untold pretties would be a great instrumental track

It is on the bonus track version. I like the bonus tracks better than than offical CD version, in many cases. More like the original acoutic solo version that blew me away a year ago in Waverly.

[Lone Wolf1]

Not sure if it's been mentioned - but the Oxford American Album Review also has the album streaming on line complete with song introductions from Patterson.

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2012/sep/11/album-review-patterson-hood/

this is friggin' great! listening now. thanks

[Zip City]

Better Off Without is the only track I'm not really feeling right now.

[Rocky]

Not sure if it's been mentioned - but the Oxford American Album Review also has the album streaming on line complete with song introductions from Patterson.

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2012/sep/11/album-review-patterson-hood/

Big props to The Avon Lady. This is fantastic!

[RevMatt]

3DD'ers,

I'm a day late with this review. Got started writing about each song on the new record and probably still have lots more to say but I've gone on long enough. Enjoy. Now I am going to obssess on something else.

“If I wrote it in a movie it would all end differently and be better than the truth.”

Eleven years ago today Drive By Truckers released Southern Rock Opera, a two disc song cycle that straddled two periods in the life of a fictionalized band from north Alabama. The first act was about coming of age as an artist in the post-civil rights era south. Act Two of Southern Rock Opera is the imagined future of a glorious run as a rock star in his dream band that is cut short by a plane crash. It was a fantastic tale; “better than the truth” as the doomed drinking buddy Billy Ringo might say on Patterson Hood’s latest album, Heat Lighting Rumbles in the Distance.

This time Patterson Hood returns to the north Alabama land that birthed him with a different agenda for this new song cycle. Staring down the ghosts of his past, Patterson Hood tells a more realistic tale than the fictionalized rock stars who fled Alabama to pursue an artistic vision only to burn out in a blaze of glory. Despite Neil Young’s proclamation that “it’s better to burn out than to fade away” the fading away is far more common in the life of an artist and in the hands of Hood it is a story that might be even more gripping. Hood draws from his own experiences in the years after his first band, Adam’s House Cat, went from being “the next big thing” to “latest rock and roll casualty.” Any artist can tell you that the years following the breakup of their first great “can’t miss” band are hellish. Occasionally an artist will rise from the ruins without missing a beat. Most, however, flounder for a period of years as they try and numb the disappointment and depression with booze, drugs and the sort of friends who offer neither encouragement nor judgment. Meanwhile, as time passes the artist realizes that his days as a rock and roll casualty are also fleeting. He either reinvents himself -- perhaps with the help of A.A. -- or accepts that he is simply another member of the 12:01 Club, standing on line for that first bottle or fix alone in a crowd where no one gives a shit that you once had a record in the top fifty of the CMJ charts and used to do van tours opening for national acts.

Like Southern Rock Opera, Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance is also set in the present day. The artist has left those hellish days behind and has now found some success in the post rock star era. There are no private airplanes but there is a bus to load presumably with “fancy road cases” that have the band’s name stenciled in white spray paint. The artist finds himself once again married -- this time happily -- and trying to come to terms with his life as it is today. The realization that he is still the same person he was twenty years ago is what makes Heat Lightning so compelling. The demons are still present, the ghosts still haunting. Though the artist has learned to manage them, they have the potential to undo everything he’s worked for and return him to that same place or worse.

The album opens with “12:01”. The narrator crosses the bridge into Colbert County to score a case of beer to get him through the wee hours of the morning. He shows up at his buddy’s crash pad where he picks up a stray banjo or guitar and strums along to the record. “A bunch of lost cases just marking time.” As the song ends he is sneaking into his apartment at dawn, careful not to wake his wife who no longer cares if he comes home or not. That song is followed with “Leaving Time”. Set in the present day, the song finds the narrator packing to go back out on the road with his band as his family is already missing him. Though no longer a member of the 12:01 Club lines like “thank God the package store sells more beer” hint that despite the more favorable set of circumstances the liquor is still necessary to cope with his family’s expectations and the awareness that his own attitude towards them just might be the one thing that guarantees they still care whether or not he comes home.

The third song, “Disappear” straddles the past and present. The artist describes how from the time he was a toddler he was able to escape the strife of his family’s life by retreating to a safe place in his own mind. Later, that safe space became the place where the words, riffs and melodies were conjured as he found his indentity as an artist. Disappearing is both a coping mechanism and the way he hears “words spoken underneath the song and I associate so freely”. In the context of the song cycle the disappearing act has consequences in his own family life. One imagines the narrator speaking the words of the song as he tries to justify to his significant other the fact that he can be at home but still not fully present to his loved ones.

At first listen, “Better Off Without” seems to be a return to the sad old days of the artist’s first marriage and comes across as a companion piece to the late Adam‘s House Cat song, “Pollyanna“. But set between “Disappear” and “(untold pretties)” the question is raised whether or not the artist is better off alone. Producing any kind of art is a solo endeavor that requires an almost monastic devotion to craft and an extreme comfort with one’s own mind. The paradox is that while writing may not be conducive to relationships, producing realistic art seems to demand them.

“(untold pretties)” is one of the centerpiece songs from this album. A spoken word piece set to a musical track reminiscent of “World of Hurt”, the narrator recalls the morning after a night with an old flame and coming “home to my fiance’s bed just a few weeks shy of getting married with the taste of an old high school sweetheart lingering on my lips and fingers.” Hood leaves much unsaid like the pressures on a man about to go through with a marriage he knows won’t work because he is afraid of what family and friends will think if he cancels at the eleventh hour. That feeling of moving inevitably towards tragedy is familiar to the survivors of doomed marriages but seldom brought up in songs. Hood uses the images of precipitation to invoke the divine presence; in one scene a sudden downpour “like a wonderful wrath from God”, in another an unexpected snowstorm on the way to his grandfather’s burial. Allusions to God and spirituality, sporadic for most of his body of work, have become more frequent in the past couple years. In “(untold pretties)” he explores this in the context of his family’s legacy as Methodist folk (chalk up another for the home team!) whose generational rites of passage took place in the humble setting of a rural family chapel. In this song God’s presence comes across as consistent, harmonious even, its anger or benevolence dependent upon the narrator’s own state of mind the moment he becomes aware of its presence, just as precipitation can reach the earth as snow or rain depending upon the temperature on the ground. Hell is a state of mind as well, something we carry for a while before “it gets to be a drag.”

Side One ends with “After The Damage”, a song I think will soon be regarded by fans as belonging in the top tier of Patterson Hood compositions. The sparse arrangement reminds one of the Plastic Ono Band album while the lyrics conjure up Lennon at his most vulnerable. At first listen the song seems to be mourning an impending breakup but it soon becomes apparent that this is a “stay together” song. Expanding on the themes first brought up in “Better Off Without”, love means becoming vulnerable to one another. Love is damaging. Opening one’s heart, sharing a life together and making babies makes a situation where walking away is impossible. In the end the song is about committing yourself for the long haul, long after the initial euphoria of love has worn off and you are left with the person you chose as well as the person you have become. The real strength in this song is the narrator’s own vulnerability and his acknowledgement that he needs her maybe even more than she needs him.

The second side opens with “ Better Than The Truth”. Billy Ringo makes his second appearance. The narrator presents Billy as a loveable screw up, blaming the world for failing to allow him to fulfill his destiny as an artist. By the last verse Billy is giving away his paintings; “said he wanted me to have them but he wouldn’t say what for.” The song ends with the narrator saying that if he wrote Billy’s story in a movie he would spare the viewers the bitter details, ending the story with him lying on the ground with a smoldering bong still in his hand. Once again, the song becomes even more powerful when the listener puts together the clues at the end of the song and realizes that Billy Ringo took his own life and possibly provided the incentive for the narrator to get his own life together.

“Betty Ford” is a song about responsibility towards our friends and loved ones, something we learn as we gain experience. We don’t let our friends or significant others descend into the hellish pit of substance abuse without intervening.

The next two songs elevate the album to a whole new level as the narrator looks at his family’s legacy. “Depression Era” is about the narrator’s grandfather, a man who came of age during the economic hardship of the 1930’s and fought in World War II. The title is deceptive because the song itself is not about the Great Depression but the narrator’s realization that his own struggles with the darkness is an inherited trait. His grandfather sucked it up and went forward, subjecting his own family to his dark silences as well as the pent up anger with its threat of violence. The title track, “Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance”, is a gentler look at his family’s legacy. The narrator is standing on his ancestral homestead with his wife and children, “somewhere between anguish and acceptance”. He sees himself becoming part of the “old guard” in his extended family, passing on his family’s heritage to his children. By now he has lived enough that the ghosts no longer haunt him but are a source of comfort. Facing the painful legacies of depression are not easy but the narrator has reached the point where he realizes that the only way out is to face them head on, “looking for comfort in the knowing.” The idea that we can somehow exorcise our own ghosts and demons is not only a fallacy but perhaps something even more destructive to our very self if it were possible. They are part of the baggage we learn to carry as family. The challenge is to carry that baggage in such a way that it does not weigh us down or destroy us.

“Come Back Little Star” was co-written with Kelly Hogan as a tribute to Vic Chesnut. In the context of this album the song takes on a different meaning. Even on the other side of success in music the threat of depression and thoughts of suicide linger. Artistic success provides no inoculation from the darkness. Believing that it ought to is itself a pitfall. That Vic Chesnutt "traded his wheels for wings" in the same manner as Billy Ringo is what makes the song so haunting.

The song cycle ends with “Fifteen Days”, a reprise of leaving time. The narrator is halfway through the tour he was packing for at the beginning of the record, pining for his family and promising to “make it up to them.” The implied promise is that with his newfound self knowledge he may still be the same person he was twenty years ago but he is better able to be there for them.

With Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance Patterson Hood gives us a small glimpse into his life. There are even references and allusions to other Hood songs and one suspects that this is intentional on his part, giving us some clues as to the inspiration of songs like "The Company I Keep". The record’s strength is that although his circumstances might be different he tells a tale of seeking emotional maturity for the sake of survival that is common to many of us. In the end, it is a courageous record about confronting one’s past honestly. Once again, Hood has tapped into our shared experiences while shining his own light upon it.

[blackwll]

Wow, Matt. Great write up. Thanks.

['Scratch]

The package from Amazon just arrived. Having the packaging and liner notes makes it even better, I just wish I had a reason to get the vinyl. There may be a couple songs I don't prefer, but as a whole it's a great album, deep as the Wilson Reservoir.


Here's to George A... and the men and women like him that had such a profound impact on our lives.

[Duke Silver]

The packaging is really nice. High quality like always. My one complaint is that the vinyl came with CD-sized liner notes, which I know are gonna get either lost or bent to hell inside the big record sleeve.

[roland]

Just got the LP in a shitty, thin bubblewrap lined envelope from Music Today. At least Amazon uses cardboard. One corner is heavily bent and another is mangled. I will never pre-order again from the DBT family as long as they use Music Today. Too much bullshit.

[Hud]

Not sure if it's been mentioned - but the Oxford American Album Review also has the album streaming on line complete with song introductions from Patterson.

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2012/sep/11/album-review-patterson-hood/

thanks for the link to this AL, really enjoying this!

[dime in the gutter]

3DD'ers,

I'm a day late with this review. Got started writing about each song on the new record and probably still have lots more to say but I've gone on long enough. Enjoy. Now I am going to obssess on something else.

“If I wrote it in a movie it would all end differently and be better than the truth.”

Eleven years ago today Drive By Truckers released Southern Rock Opera, a two disc song cycle that straddled two periods in the life of a fictionalized band from north Alabama. The first act was about coming of age as an artist in the post-civil rights era south. Act Two of Southern Rock Opera is the imagined future of a glorious run as a rock star in his dream band that is cut short by a plane crash. It was a fantastic tale; “better than the truth” as the doomed drinking buddy Billy Ringo might say on Patterson Hood’s latest album, Heat Lighting Rumbles in the Distance.

This time Patterson Hood returns to the north Alabama land that birthed him with a different agenda for this new song cycle. Staring down the ghosts of his past, Patterson Hood tells a more realistic tale than the fictionalized rock stars who fled Alabama to pursue an artistic vision only to burn out in a blaze of glory. Despite Neil Young’s proclamation that “it’s better to burn out than to fade away” the fading away is far more common in the life of an artist and in the hands of Hood it is a story that might be even more gripping. Hood draws from his own experiences in the years after his first band, Adam’s House Cat, went from being “the next big thing” to “latest rock and roll casualty.” Any artist can tell you that the years following the breakup of their first great “can’t miss” band are hellish. Occasionally an artist will rise from the ruins without missing a beat. Most, however, flounder for a period of years as they try and numb the disappointment and depression with booze, drugs and the sort of friends who offer neither encouragement nor judgment. Meanwhile, as time passes the artist realizes that his days as a rock and roll casualty are also fleeting. He either reinvents himself -- perhaps with the help of A.A. -- or accepts that he is simply another member of the 12:01 Club, standing on line for that first bottle or fix alone in a crowd where no one gives a shit that you once had a record in the top fifty of the CMJ charts and used to do van tours opening for national acts.

Like Southern Rock Opera, Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance is also set in the present day. The artist has left those hellish days behind and has now found some success in the post rock star era. There are no private airplanes but there is a bus to load presumably with “fancy road cases” that have the band’s name stenciled in white spray paint. The artist finds himself once again married -- this time happily -- and trying to come to terms with his life as it is today. The realization that he is still the same person he was twenty years ago is what makes Heat Lightning so compelling. The demons are still present, the ghosts still haunting. Though the artist has learned to manage them, they have the potential to undo everything he’s worked for and return him to that same place or worse.

The album opens with “12:01”. The narrator crosses the bridge into Colbert County to score a case of beer to get him through the wee hours of the morning. He shows up at his buddy’s crash pad where he picks up a stray banjo or guitar and strums along to the record. “A bunch of lost cases just marking time.” As the song ends he is sneaking into his apartment at dawn, careful not to wake his wife who no longer cares if he comes home or not. That song is followed with “Leaving Time”. Set in the present day, the song finds the narrator packing to go back out on the road with his band as his family is already missing him. Though no longer a member of the 12:01 Club lines like “thank God the package store sells more beer” hint that despite the more favorable set of circumstances the liquor is still necessary to cope with his family’s expectations and the awareness that his own attitude towards them just might be the one thing that guarantees they still care whether or not he comes home.

The third song, “Disappear” straddles the past and present. The artist describes how from the time he was a toddler he was able to escape the strife of his family’s life by retreating to a safe place in his own mind. Later, that safe space became the place where the words, riffs and melodies were conjured as he found his indentity as an artist. Disappearing is both a coping mechanism and the way he hears “words spoken underneath the song and I associate so freely”. In the context of the song cycle the disappearing act has consequences in his own family life. One imagines the narrator speaking the words of the song as he tries to justify to his significant other the fact that he can be at home but still not fully present to his loved ones.

At first listen, “Better Off Without” seems to be a return to the sad old days of the artist’s first marriage and comes across as a companion piece to the late Adam‘s House Cat song, “Pollyanna“. But set between “Disappear” and “(untold pretties)” the question is raised whether or not the artist is better off alone. Producing any kind of art is a solo endeavor that requires an almost monastic devotion to craft and an extreme comfort with one’s own mind. The paradox is that while writing may not be conducive to relationships, producing realistic art seems to demand them.

“(untold pretties)” is one of the centerpiece songs from this album. A spoken word piece set to a musical track reminiscent of “World of Hurt”, the narrator recalls the morning after a night with an old flame and coming “home to my fiance’s bed just a few weeks shy of getting married with the taste of an old high school sweetheart lingering on my lips and fingers.” Hood leaves much unsaid like the pressures on a man about to go through with a marriage he knows won’t work because he is afraid of what family and friends will think if he cancels at the eleventh hour. That feeling of moving inevitably towards tragedy is familiar to the survivors of doomed marriages but seldom brought up in songs. Hood uses the images of precipitation to invoke the divine presence; in one scene a sudden downpour “like a wonderful wrath from God”, in another an unexpected snowstorm on the way to his grandfather’s burial. Allusions to God and spirituality, sporadic for most of his body of work, have become more frequent in the past couple years. In “(untold pretties)” he explores this in the context of his family’s legacy as Methodist folk (chalk up another for the home team!) whose generational rites of passage took place in the humble setting of a rural family chapel. In this song God’s presence comes across as consistent, harmonious even, its anger or benevolence dependent upon the narrator’s own state of mind the moment he becomes aware of its presence, just as precipitation can reach the earth as snow or rain depending upon the temperature on the ground. Hell is a state of mind as well, something we carry for a while before “it gets to be a drag.”

Side One ends with “After The Damage”, a song I think will soon be regarded by fans as belonging in the top tier of Patterson Hood compositions. The sparse arrangement reminds one of the Plastic Ono Band album while the lyrics conjure up Lennon at his most vulnerable. At first listen the song seems to be mourning an impending breakup but it soon becomes apparent that this is a “stay together” song. Expanding on the themes first brought up in “Better Off Without”, love means becoming vulnerable to one another. Love is damaging. Opening one’s heart, sharing a life together and making babies makes a situation where walking away is impossible. In the end the song is about committing yourself for the long haul, long after the initial euphoria of love has worn off and you are left with the person you chose as well as the person you have become. The real strength in this song is the narrator’s own vulnerability and his acknowledgement that he needs her maybe even more than she needs him.

The second side opens with “ Better Than The Truth”. Billy Ringo makes his second appearance. The narrator presents Billy as a loveable screw up, blaming the world for failing to allow him to fulfill his destiny as an artist. By the last verse Billy is giving away his paintings; “said he wanted me to have them but he wouldn’t say what for.” The song ends with the narrator saying that if he wrote Billy’s story in a movie he would spare the viewers the bitter details, ending the story with him lying on the ground with a smoldering bong still in his hand. Once again, the song becomes even more powerful when the listener puts together the clues at the end of the song and realizes that Billy Ringo took his own life and possibly provided the incentive for the narrator to get his own life together.

“Betty Ford” is a song about responsibility towards our friends and loved ones, something we learn as we gain experience. We don’t let our friends or significant others descend into the hellish pit of substance abuse without intervening.

The next two songs elevate the album to a whole new level as the narrator looks at his family’s legacy. “Depression Era” is about the narrator’s grandfather, a man who came of age during the economic hardship of the 1930’s and fought in World War II. The title is deceptive because the song itself is not about the Great Depression but the narrator’s realization that his own struggles with the darkness is an inherited trait. His grandfather sucked it up and went forward, subjecting his own family to his dark silences as well as the pent up anger with its threat of violence. The title track, “Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance”, is a gentler look at his family’s legacy. The narrator is standing on his ancestral homestead with his wife and children, “somewhere between anguish and acceptance”. He sees himself becoming part of the “old guard” in his extended family, passing on his family’s heritage to his children. By now he has lived enough that the ghosts no longer haunt him but are a source of comfort. Facing the painful legacies of depression are not easy but the narrator has reached the point where he realizes that the only way out is to face them head on, “looking for comfort in the knowing.” The idea that we can somehow exorcise our own ghosts and demons is not only a fallacy but perhaps something even more destructive to our very self if it were possible. They are part of the baggage we learn to carry as family. The challenge is to carry that baggage in such a way that it does not weigh us down or destroy us.

“Come Back Little Star” was co-written with Kelly Hogan as a tribute to Vic Chesnut. In the context of this album the song takes on a different meaning. Even on the other side of success in music the threat of depression and thoughts of suicide linger. Artistic success provides no inoculation from the darkness. Believing that it ought to is itself a pitfall. That Vic Chesnutt "traded his wheels for wings" in the same manner as Billy Ringo is what makes the song so haunting.

The song cycle ends with “Fifteen Days”, a reprise of leaving time. The narrator is halfway through the tour he was packing for at the beginning of the record, pining for his family and promising to “make it up to them.” The implied promise is that with his newfound self knowledge he may still be the same person he was twenty years ago but he is better able to be there for them.

With Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance Patterson Hood gives us a small glimpse into his life. There are even references and allusions to other Hood songs and one suspects that this is intentional on his part, giving us some clues as to the inspiration of songs like "The Company I Keep". The record’s strength is that although his circumstances might be different he tells a tale of seeking emotional maturity for the sake of survival that is common to many of us. In the end, it is a courageous record about confronting one’s past honestly. Once again, Hood has tapped into our shared experiences while shining his own light upon it.

only 1/2 thru this read.....looking forward to more.

cool take.

[RMD]

After a couple listens I really enjoy it. I feel the tracking is a little off to me. 12:01 is a strange opener in my opinion, but I am not the artist obviously so what do I know. I also feel it is an album Patterson HAD to put out. Right now I don't feel this will get as many listens as Murdering Oscar, but that's ok. All in all solid.

[RMD]

And great write up Rev.

[jimmyjack]

Just got the LP in a shitty, thin bubblewrap lined envelope from Music Today. At least Amazon uses cardboard. One corner is heavily bent and another is mangled. I will never pre-order again from the DBT family as long as they use Music Today. Too much bullshit.

^^ x2

[Lone Wolf1]

And great write up Rev.

yeah. ditto

[bovine knievel]

Relix review