Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood’s 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’s career, many of which provided him with distraction and creative sustenance during lockdown, others which have resided among his notebooks for years.

With its powerful textural clarity and Hood’s 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’s resolute inclination to look back through the golden haze to grapple with the darkness and secret truths that perhaps weren’t understood or reckoned with at the time. As he has throughout his career – from Drive-By Truckers’ ceaseless investigation into American values and culture to his solo body of work’s autobiographical meditations – Exploding Trees and Airplane Screams sees Patterson Hood once again stripping away the facade of things to get to the core, lifting up life’s rock to see what lies underneath.