Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood has announced his first solo album in 12 years. Set for release on February 21 via ATO, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams features guest appearances from Waxahatchee, Kevin Morby, and Wednesday. Accompanying the announcement is the Lydia Loveless duet ‘A Werewolf and a Girl’, which arrives with a video directed by Kid Dynamite/None More Black’s Jason Shevchuk. Check it out below.
“‘A Werewolf and A Girl’ was written in August of 2021, around 40 years after I fell for my high school sweetheart,” Hood explained. “The song juxtaposed our falling in love and our breakup a year later. Once I cut the demo, I knew I wanted a woman to sing the choruses from the girl’s point of view. And in my head, it was always going to be Lydia. I mean, I didn’t really even have a second choice. The subject matter’s kind of provocative, so I wouldn’t have wanted to ask somebody that I didn’t feel was a friend. I wouldn’t want someone to be uncomfortable and then just not want to talk to me anymore. What I didn’t count on was that when I asked Lydia if she would be interested in doing it, she actually happened to be in the studio and did it the next day. And that’s what’s on the record.”
Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams was produced by the Decemberists’ Chris Funk, and the Decemberists’ Nate Query also plays on it. Other contributors include Kevin Morby, Brad and Phil Cook, Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin, David Barbe, Stuart Bogie, Patterson’s Drive-By Truckers bandmates Brad Morgan and Jay Gonzalez, and more.
“You remember it one way, but when you really dip into it, when you really look back, the world was a different place,” Hood reflected. “Things were accepted that wouldn’t be accepted now and things you didn’t understand then make sense now.
“This record has all these kind of unintended themes,” he added. “I don’t know if that was anything I set out to do as much as it just kind of worked out that way. You know, there are a lot a lot of happy accidents in this record.”
Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams Cover Artwork:
Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams Tracklist:
1. Exploding Trees
2. A Werewolf and a Girl [feat. Lydia Loveless]
3. The Forks of Cypress [feat. Waxahatchee]
4. Miss Coldiron’s Oldsmobile
5. The Pool House
6. The Van Pelt Parties [feat. Wednesday]
8. Last Hope
9. At Safe Distance
10. Airplane Screams
11. Pinocchio
