Bicentennial Drug Lord is back with a punchy new single, “Iggy Pop” and it’s a total blast of energy. This track doesn’t waste time, it clocks in under three minutes but leaves a strong impression. From the gritty guitar riffs to the steady drums, the song hits that sweet spot between classic rock and modern storytelling.
The production is clean and powerful, letting the rich instrumentation shine. It’s sharp and playful and the lyrics are smart and easy to listen to. This band is professional and they bring real charm to their music. They sound like a band that knows exactly who they are. This new single captures that raw rock spirit, but with polish and heart. We’ve already played it on repeat and we probably will again.
ABOUT THE BAND:
Bicentennial Drug Lord – You Are Never Alone by Marc Delgado
What is Rock n Roll Mythology? You know the basic tenets: Use drugs and alcohol to subvert convention and normalcy. Write songs and use music and lyrics to convey angst and dissatisfaction with the status quo. Revel in the breaking of hearts. Most importantly your own. Create poetry and beauty out of ugliness and sorrow whilst catapulting yourself and your bandmates to superstardom. Then, lastly, exit this earth by the age of 27.
What happens though, when say, things don’t quite work out that way and one is still wandering the earth with guitar and pen in hand? One must create a new mythology. One in which the hero is aging and trying not to take a drink or maybe still taking a drink. Trying to quit smoking or maybe still smoking but maybe lights instead of 100’s. Remembering failed relationships. Attending funerals from said previous mythology. Rescuing dogs. Thinking about how to maintain a relationship instead of destroying it.
I’ll tell you what you get. You get the new record from Bicentennial Drug Lord: You Are Never Alone. A comforting (like the title assures us) 10 song, power pop, rock and country gem composed by longtime pals and Milwaukee Natives: John Daniels – Vox and Bass (Soda, Maki) Rick Donner – Vox, Guitar, Harmonica (Punchdrunk) and Alan Weatherhead – Vox, Guitar, Keyboards, Lap Steel (Soda, Maki, Sparklehorse, Hotel Lights).
BDL is joined brilliantly on Drums by Kevin Lumley. Libby Rodenbough of Fust, adds fiddle on The Ballad of Snooki the Pit, a gorgeous Big Star sounding track about the transient nature of Love and how people and animals come and go in our lives and that’s all right and we are better for it. Libby also plays and sings beautifully on Rock Bottom a doomed and lovely country ballad about a “frayed couple that have to go their separate ways for self-preservation”
The album is produced by Alan Weatherhead and Alex Farrar & Recorded by Alex Farrar in Asheville, NC at Drop of Sun Studios
Everything about this record is a reminder that you, music lover, are not alone. BDL is here to hold your hand through this next phase of life. You don’t have to throw out your leather jacket, you just don’t get to wear it all the time, ok?
Consider the album cover, a phenomenal photo by Mark Cherek entitled: Jou Jou in New York. Who is Jou Jou? What is she doing in New York? It is all myth is it not? It is all art and mystery and romance and nostalgia and beauty, All of the things we want from our Rock n Roll.
All members sing and write and the song credits are listed like this: Daniels/Donner/Weatherhead. Who wrote what? Who is singing? It’s like listening to a Beatles record and trying to suss out whose tune it is. Or listening to Big Star’s #1 record and trying to figure out if that high-pitched howl was Chris Bell or Alex Chilton.
You Are Never Alone is an absolute joy of a listen filled with lush guitars, catchy choruses, heartbreaking, introspective, funny and literary lyricism, and fabulous and epic outros. All the while paying tribute to BDL’s many influences without ever sounding derivative or flat. It is a music nerds paradise filled with all the insider references and name-drops one needs to be reminded that, like Bob Seger says, “ Rock n Roll never forgets.”
The opening track: This Pabst Blue Ribbon, a ghostly country ballad, also the first track written for the album, “sets the tone for everything that follows” says Daniels. “Even if sometimes your only companions are the ghosts from your past and Pabst Blue Ribbon.”
Caught Wishing is an epic, power pop rocker and “part love letter to the Milwaukee music scene” filled with lyrical gems like this: The room got dizzy and I held on to her/Was it the sound of Thin Lizzy that corrected the blur.
Iggy Pop pays more tribute to whence from BDL comes replete with stooges guitars and clocking in at 2:41. And more lyrical acrobatics from Rick Donner: Finally quit smoking and swore off the powder/You pull off your ring and leave it on the counter/Since when did babysitters start charging 10 bucks an hour. Right. On.
Daylight Through Your Eyes a sonic treat from Weatherhead with one of those aforementioned fabulous outros, and again Beatles and Kinks fans this one clocks in at 2:11. The tune is gorgeous and thought provoking, about helping rescued dogs overcome trauma and to see the world through their eyes. A fantastic course in empathy.
Daniels lonely Before the Icicles and Frost is crushing and lovely and hearkens to English Pop in a devastatingly beautiful way & offers these fantastic lines: Sometimes, it’s hard to shake January off/ You shiver and you cough/ Some colds won’t go away.
The grand finale of Never Alone’s feast of friends is The Gates of Headley Grange another sonic masterpiece that suggests perhaps there is a Valhalla for rockers and features this lyrical somersault: When the smoke finally lifts, the Echoplex’s embers/Glow until they drift at last into the night and the final gift is the coda where it seems everybody is present singing along; Faces in Frames/Remembering Names.
Nostalgia, Mythology, Reflection and Tribute make You Are Never Alone a compelling, funny and heartbreaking record. I think this line from Daniels says it best and operates as a kind of subtitle: “And Memories can be beautiful and somewhat sad at the same time.”
