To get through a life slap full of bullshit – bullshit you had no hand in creating and can barely improve, hardly tolerate – sustainment appears in any form of succor: a trusting partner, the dive bar, loud music, silly dancing, the unconditional love of a good dog.
These themes build the foundation to the new songs on the Williamson Brothers’ second album Aquila. Once again, Aquila proves that the best new music flows from the South. The Williamson Brothers’ raw, distinctive Birmingham sound looks directly at America’s fucked-up problems as well nods to the things that keep them alive in the midst of hell.
Brothers Adam and Blake have made music together in some form since 1995; Aquila offers their most mature album to date with the help of bassist Matt Patton (Dexateens, Drive-by Truckers), multi-instrumentalist and songwriter John Calvin Abney, keyboardist Jay Gonzalez (Drive-by Truckers), musician Hank West (The Smokin’ Hots), drummer Mike Gault (Model Citizen, The Bohannons, Williamson Brothers), and producer Bronson Tew.
The album conveys a sense of maturity without sacrificing their loud, guitar-driven signature style of their youth, often heard in their early band Black Willis. No ballads here. Fuzzed-out guitars from start to finish. Yet it’s hard to imagine “loving her has given me peace” appearing on an album from Black Willis. Still, “Give Me Peace” and its notion of relief in love sits side-by-side with the adult-sized problems of “American Original” where Adam belts that this shit exacerbated with the “man on the radio” who “tells you what to believe” as well as “Save the 21st Century” where it’s “fear and loss/Division at all costs” with the “never-ending content.” One of Adam Williamson’s best songs yet is a slow build of drums, bass, and guitar that almost never reaches an apex as his voice gains momentum to shout that there is “no reason to deck these halls” and “tears of joy/They have no place to fall” (“No Place To Fall”).
Aquila accounts for those responsible for woes and also realizes that these difficulties belong to a working class now. They are “priced out of [their] homes” so “it’s time to take our medicine,” as Blake Williamson sings to a desperate guitar and immediate, pounding drum beat in “Medicine.” And once drums and bass begin, the only relief comes in the form of Adam’s piercing, bended notes. It is a sign of the times.
Photograph by Ann Sydney Williamson
While Aquila hammers issues which aren’t only Southern now, the Williamsons pepper in acknowledgements of what gets them through. In “All These Years,” Blake celebrates the loving and hard work his mother put into the two of them. “Good Boy” sweetly pays tribute to man’s best friend with long guitar and harmonica notes of yearning. In one of their most original arrangements, “Dance Machine” recounts the wild man at the party who whips “his hair and [swings] his coat” to anything from “reggae, country, and pop.” In such images, it’s not hard to imagine the track as an ode to Blake himself.
With their best and most pure rock album, the Williamsons still don’t find a silver bullet, though “All Lit Up” as a closer comes as close as they can. Blended with restrained drumming from Gault, a guitar weaves in and out of slinky saxophone sounds, all like waves on the shoreline in “All Lit Up.” And it’s there, in the end, that the solution may just be to “let it burn all night.”
Pre-order the album from Dail Back Sound with the link here.
