The thirteenth studio album from Old 97’s, American Primitive arose from what
vocalist/guitarist Rhett Miller refers to as a “de-evolution” of the legendary Dallas-
bred band. “As much as I want us to calm down and grow up, the songs that felt
right for this record were mostly big and loud and brutal and dirty,” says Miller,
whose bandmates include bassist Murry Hammond, guitarist Ken Bethea, and
drummer Philip Peeples. Arriving just months before the 30th anniversary
of Hitchhike to Rhome—a powerhouse debut that played a vital part in pioneering
the alt-country genre—the result is a gloriously rowdy body of work, revealing a
veteran band more attuned than ever to the raw and reckless energy of truly
timeless rock-and-roll.

With its title lifted from a bit of fictional art criticism in Stephen King’s psych-
horror novel Duma Key, American Primitive merges its unvarnished sound with
the punchy yet poignant storytelling signature to Old 97’s, radiating a
rambunctious joy even as Miller’s lyrics contend with complex questions of love
and mental illness and the routinely daunting state of the world. Produced by
Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists, Neko Case) and featuring
iconic guest musicians like Peter Buck of R.E.M. and Scott McCaughey of The Young
Fresh Fellows and The Minus 5, the album took shape in a series of deliberately
whirlwind sessions at Flora Studio in Portland, Oregon. “This was the first record
we’ve ever done with zero pre-production,” Miller points out. “It’s us working
completely on instinct, leaning on 30 years of playing together to come up with
something on the fly rather than overthinking any of our choices.”

Kicking off with the frenzied riffs and restless grooves of “Falling Down,” American
Primitive opens on a lyric encapsulating the album’s snarling joie de vivre: “You’ve
got to dance like the world is falling down around you, because it is.” Next, on
“Somebody,” Old 97’s deliver a thumping punkabilly anthem channeling both
desire and doom. “That song came from looking back over my relationship history
and acknowledging that I spent a long time as something of a serial monogamist,”
says Miller. “As a young man I was in love with the idea of being in love, and I
wanted ‘Somebody’ to speak to the hopelessness of exiting a very intense
relationship and knowing you’re just going to rush right into the next one.” From
there, American Primitive bursts into the breakneck urgency of its title track, a
gorgeous entangling of poetic observation and feverishly expressed longing. “I was
sitting on the balcony of a hotel in Peachtree, Georgia, watching the sun setting
over the forest and trying to identify the trees, and I started writing what began as
meditation on nature but eventually turned into a song about missing someone,”
Miller recalls. “I wound up taking inspiration from that phrase in the Stephen King
novel, which felt like a perfect description for our band and how primitive and
unstudied we are.”

Another track born from Miller’s contemplation of the natural world, lead single
“Where The Road Goes” slips into a lush and hypnotic reverie, achieved in part
through Buck’s arpeggiated 12-string guitar and a trance-inducing drum loop
dreamed up by Peeples and Martine. “I was in Montana and found myself on the
banks of the Blackfoot River, watching the water pounding with a ferocious power,
and I started building this song as a statement of gratitude for having survived this
long,” says Miller. “It revisits some of the darkest moments of my life, including a
suicide attempt at age 14 that by all rights I shouldn’t have lived through and yet
somehow did. In a way it’s like a spiritual travelogue that rolls back through all the
places that shaped me for better or worse, and ends up in this beautiful place that
I felt so thankful to experience.”

A distinctly literary lyricist who’s authored a number of children’s books and
written for publications like McSweeney’s and The Atlantic, Miller
threads American Primitive with so much lived-in yet dreamlike detail, such as on
the sublimely blistering “Masterpiece” (“So I sank to the bottom of the hotel
pool/You drank sunshine like you always do/Then it rained broken glass on your
paperback/The ink ran and so did I, never said goodbye/Just fade to black”).
“Magic” serves up a jittery piece of power-pop echoing the anguish of grasping for
salvation, while “Western Stars” presents an intimate portrait of pained isolation
inspired by an epic Alfred Lord Tennyson poem that Miller memorized in high
school. Equal parts sprawling rumination and freewheeling joyride, the album also
spans from the stripped-back benediction of “Incantation” to the sweetly skewed
whimsy of “Honeypie” (a loping and lighthearted love song featuring McCaughey
on piano and Buck on mandolin). And on “Estuviera Cayendo,” American
Primitive closes out with an instrumental reprise of “Falling Down,” beautifully
reimagined on flamenco guitar by guest musician Jeff Trapp.

In choosing the cover art for American Primitive, Old 97’s selected a painting
created by Hammond’s 17-year-old son Tex Hammond—a prodigious talent who,
at age 14, became the youngest artist ever to exhibit at the prestigious LA Art
Show. It’s a fitting choice for a band who’ve maintained a certain youthful
exuberance more than three decades into their career, and for an album in which
a palpable sense of wonder prevails despite its world-weary undercurrent. “Over
the last year of touring in celebration of our 30th anniversary, it’s been impossible
not feel some emotion welling up at the idea that my bandmates and I have been
in this close brotherhood for so long,” says Miller. “I think a lot of that longevity
has to do with the fact that we’re really the same band we were back then. We’ve
experimented with pushing in different directions, and we’ve had experiences
outside the band where we’ve learned new things, but the way we approach this music has fundamentally remained the same. Our heart is still in the exact same
place.”