Old 97’s

 

The thirteenth studio album from Old 97’s, American Primitive arose from what vocalist/guitarist Rhett Miller refers to as a “de-evolution” of the legendary Dallas-bred band. “As much as I want us to calm down and grow up, the songs that felt right for this record were mostly big and loud and brutal and dirty,” says Miller, whose bandmates include bassist Murry Hammond, guitarist Ken Bethea, and drummer Philip Peeples. Arriving just months before the 30th anniversary of Hitchhike to Rhome—a powerhouse debut that played a vital part in pioneering the alt-country genre—the result is a gloriously rowdy body of work, revealing a veteran band more attuned than ever to the raw and reckless energy of truly timeless rock-and-roll.

With its title lifted from a bit of fictional art criticism in Stephen King’s psych-horror novel Duma Key, American Primitive merges its unvarnished sound with the punchy yet poignant storytelling signature to Old 97’s, radiating a rambunctious joy even as Miller’s lyrics contend with complex questions of love and mental illness and the routinely daunting state of the world. Produced by Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists, Neko Case) and featuring iconic guest musicians like Peter Buck of R.E.M. and Scott McCaughey of The Young Fresh Fellows and The Minus 5, the album took shape in a series of deliberately whirlwind sessions at Flora Studio in Portland, Oregon. “This was the first record we’ve ever done with zero pre-production,” Miller points out. “It’s us working completely on instinct, leaning on 30 years of playing together to come up with something on the fly rather than overthinking any of our choices.” 

Kicking off with the frenzied riffs and restless grooves of “Falling Down,” American Primitive opens on a lyric encapsulating the album’s snarling joie de vivre: “You’ve got to dance like the world is falling down around you, because it is.” Next, on “Somebody,” Old 97’s deliver a thumping punkabilly anthem channeling both desire and doom. “That song came from looking back over my relationship history and acknowledging that I spent a long time as something of a serial monogamist,” says Miller. “As a young man I was in love with the idea of being in love, and I wanted ‘Somebody’ to speak to the hopelessness of exiting a very intense relationship and knowing you’re just going to rush right into the next one.” From there, American Primitive bursts into the breakneck urgency of its title track, a gorgeous entangling of poetic observation and feverishly expressed longing. “I was sitting on the balcony of a hotel in Peachtree, Georgia, watching the sun setting over the forest and trying to identify the trees, and I started writing what began as meditation on nature but eventually turned into a song about missing someone,” Miller recalls. “I wound up taking inspiration from that phrase in the Stephen King novel, which felt like a perfect description for our band and how primitive and unstudied we are.”