The band are shocking their fanbase with new album The Unraveling, full of fury about the state of America – from school shootings to caged kids. We meet the angry Alabamians
Mike Cooley has a gift for aphorism. “Paranoia’s like pulled pork,” he says, in his deep
Alabama baritone. “It’s on menus all over the world, but in the
American south it’s special.” That one is the final line of a riff on guns and why southerners like weapons, one of the subjects that crops up on Drive-By Truckers’ 12th album, The Unraveling.
Cooley and Patterson Hood, his fellow guitarist-singer-songwriter in the Truckers, are eating lamb meatballs on a chilly afternoon in
New York, on the day The Unraveling is released. The title seems apt. A few hundred miles south, in
Washington DC, Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is stalling in the Senate; across the Atlantic, as we speak, the
UK is leaving the EU. “Unfortunately, we kinda saw it coming,” Hood says of the release date. “Things are so crazy right now, you never know what’s gonna happen next. You just know it’s gonna be ridiculous and shitty.”