New Release: Patterson Hood, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams (ATO Records), 2/21/25

As the Drive-By Truckers wrapped up their Southern Rock Opera Revisited Tour in the fall, the band’s tag-team singing duo of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley prepared to embark on tours to share their solo wares. Back in November, Hood released the single “A Werewolf And A Girl,” featuring Lydia Loveless, from his upcoming solo album Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams due February 21. It’s his fourth solo project and first since 2012’s Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance.

Usually harmonizing with bandmate Cooley, Hood has employed the skills of Loveless and created a beauty of a song in “Werewolf.” The Alt-Country singer-songwriter Loveless has had a growing career and brings a new twist to Hood’s repertoire. Add a lonely piano intro along with a dreamy sax solo and this sounds like nothing the Truckers ever did, but Hood’s voice remains searingly true.

He describes the new album as, “…a collection of songs, often based around my childhood and coming of age, mostly written over the past decade.” He goes on to mention friends who are prominently featured on the album, including Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee,) Kevin Morby, MJ Lenderman and his band Wednesday, fellow Trucker Jay Gonzalez, and David Barbe, to name but a few. In the spring, he will kick off a two-month tour with the band he’s put together called The Sensurrounders. Loveless will open all the shows.

Truckers fans know and love the late Wes Freed, the Virginia artist and friend of the band who provided many incredible DBT album covers. For this album, Athens, GA artist Frances Thrasher has created a thrilling and intriguing piece of artwork for Hood’s new album. Once you see “Headache,” you won’t soon unsee it, reminiscent of all great art. Find her on social media at #Heaven4theYoung.

Second single “The Pool House” creeps straight into your consciousness with beautiful strings arranged by Kyleen King. The foreboding arrangements lead into Hood’s vocals, “The hole in the screen looking out onto the scene of a moonlit fight / As he stares himself down, his own reflection keeps telling him the jig is up and the knot is tight.” Steve Berlin’s flute extends your imagination into the darkness as Hood sings of a man with no hope. With fellow Alabamian Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee), Hood creates a warmness on “The Forks of Cypress.” The song is named for the 19th century cotton plantation in Florence, Alabama – just a stone’s throw from Hood’s hometown of Muscle Shoals. The harmonies with Crutchfield hit you right in the heart. The two create a dreamy track full of harmonies, pulling in the listener with every note.

As side one begins, you hear the first-hand story from Hood of the paralyzing ice storm in Muscle Shoals back in 1994. The plaintive piano drags you right into the experience. In fact, many of Hood’s songs are real-life accounts of his own life. He nails the emotions many had growing up in the South. If you need more evidence, check out the Truckers’s 2001 release Southern Rock Opera. It’s a veritable history lesson of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Southern Gothic experience. Hood the storyteller has something to say, and his distinctive songwriting and voice are his superpowers.

The rockness of “The Van Pelt Parties,” backed by Asheville’s own Wednesday (Hood’s current favorite band), is immediately evident. His history with DBT has caused fans to attempt a label. Not that easy, as the band veers from rock, into country, folk, Americana, and more. For Exploding Trees, Hood pushes the envelope even further, experimenting with instruments never heard on any DBT album. And it works.

It may be a stretch to proclaim that Patterson Hood is coming out of his shell, but it is a fact that he is exploring new musical frontiers, overlayed with old memories. DBT fans (aka, HeAthens) should fall in love with this thing, while a wholly fresh set of listeners may just sit up and pay attention to one of the South’s – check that – America’s preeminent singer/songwriters. Hood has a story to tell and I don’t want it to end.

You can preview and pre-order Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams now at Hood’s Bandcamp page. For tour dates, check out his website.

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