DS Review: Lucero reinvent their rock-and-roll roots on “Should’ve Learned By Now”
It’s weird to think of an album as being a “back to basics” record when you’re a band that has gone through as many changes in sonic direction as Lucero has over their quarter-century run, but that’s exactly where the Memphis-based quintet find themselves on their latest release, Should’ve Learned By Now (out today on Thirty Tigers/Liberty & Lament). The album marks the band’s eleventh full-length release – twelfth if you count The Attic Tapes, which you’re certainly allowed to do – and represents the band’s most straight-forward dare-I-say “rock and roll” record in quite some time, probably since at least Nobody’s Darlings.
The festivities get started with “One Last F.U.” which is a song that’s been floating around for the better part of the last half-decade at this point, a crowd favorite that finally made it onto a proper record. It’s a raucous barn-burner of a song, three-and-a-half minutes of four-on-the-floor rock (complete with cowbell, albeit maybe not enough) and squelchy guitars and more piss-and-vinegar in the lyrics than we’ve heard from the mouth of Ben Nichols in quite some time. More on that later.
The gas pedal stays pinned down for “Macon If We Make It,” a ripper of a tune that intertwines a literal storm outside with a figurative storm back home, a theme that returns a few songs later on the acoustic-driven ditty (am I allowed to call a song a ditty on a punk rock website?) “Raining For Weeks.” “Nothing’s Alright,” another track that quickly made a great impression when it debuted live toward the end of last year, brings with it a big, anthemic chorus. Throughout the record, Brian Venable continues to do that thing that really, only Brian Venable does, his wandering, pinch harmonic-filled guitar lines as snarly as ever, shining brightly on tracks like “One Last F.U.” and “Macon If We Make It” and personal favorites “Buy A Little Time” and the title track. The latter two continue the album’s general sonic theme of big uptempo rock songs that will quickly make their way into the setlist, to the delight of many a longtime fan from back in the band’s more raucous early days. While many of the tracks on Should’ve Learned By Now have been around a while and didn’t fit stylistically with the likes of their last record, 2021’s When You Found Me, “At The Show” is a straight-forward track that really could have been a thematic holdover from the Tennessee sessions two decades prior (or, hell, even from the Red 40 years).
That’s not to say that the album is all boilerplate up-tempo rockers. “She Leads Me Now” is a pretty, mid-tempo not-quite-ballad that actually features vocal harmonies, a rarity on a Lucero record. The aforementioned “Raining For Weeks” comes complete with a pretty piano melody that belies the track’s melancholy lyrics. “Drunken Moon” is a legitimate ballad with even more vocal harmonies (perfected by the trio of Edwards brothers from LA Edwards on the last East Coast run if you were lucky enough to catch it). As per usual, the rhythm section of Roy Berry and John C. Stubblefield provide a stable foundation for the rest of the musical structure to build off. Neither would win awards for flashiest or over-the-top playing, but that’s never been what Lucero has called for musically. With Rick Steff on keys (and again on accordion as an unexpected and welcome treat on album-closer “Time To Go Home”) providing texture and melodies and Nichols and Venable’s inimitable styles of guitar-playing, Berry and Stubblefield – both live and on record – serve as the closest thing you’ll find to guardrails in a Lucero sound.
Lyrically, Ben Nichols has made a career out of tapping into the role of barroom poet. He’s been heart-breakingly honest at times and revealed a lot of himself through tales of loves both unrequited (especially in the earlier years) and more recently, unadulterated, especially with the prominent role that the women in his life have taken over the last handful of years. And of course there have been the more character-driven songs that have spoken to the human condition and to people trying to make their respective ways through various trials and tribulations and staring down the ghosts of the consequences of their actions. On Should’ve Known By Now, Nichols seems to have also stripped away some of the imagery in his stories, keeping the context a little simpler (look, mom…curse words!) yet somehow, perhaps unintentionally, revealing more of himself in the process than meets the eye, particularly on songs like “Buy A Little Time” and “Drunken Moon.”
I’ve been dyed-in-the-wool Lucero fan for a lot of years and have traveled many, many miles to see the band and its members and I’m happy to follow them down whatever musical rabbit holes they want to venture down. You want so sing tear-jerkers about unrequited love? Check. Whiskey nights and rodeos? Check. Keyboards and horns and a traditional Memphis soul influence? Sounds good. Accordion-infused World War II songs? Let’s do it. Synthesizers and soaring guitars and post-apocalyptic retellings of Little Red Riding Hood? Absolutely. Campfire singalongs inspired by an incredibly bleak Cormac McCarthy western novel? Let’s do it. Trap-horror instrumental movie soundtracks? Sign me up. The weirded and newer the direction, the better.
And yet, I really, really enjoy Should’ve Learned By Now. There’s something about the singularity of musical focus and putting forth a no-frills rock record that results in a record that fits in the collection like a glove. Without really sounding like any previous Lucero record, it somehow encapsulates some core tenets of all of the albums that precede it in the band’s oeuvre. Once described semi-tongue-in-cheekily as “too country for punk rock and too punk rock for country,” Lucero circa 2023 probably don’t qualify as either one now, because they’ve carved out their own niche. They’re not really country or punk or Memphis soul or Americana or roots rock or whatever other labels we might want to throw at them. They’re Lucero. We really should’ve learned by now.