Tickets $20 - $35DAVE HAUSEโS SONGS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ROOTED IN TANGIBLE REALITYโOF EMOTION\, OF ENVIRONMENT\, OF CIRCUMSTANCE.Since releasing his debut album\, Resolutions\, in 2011\, the Philadelphia-born songwriter has poured his whole heart\, soul and life into his music. Thatโs no different on Drive It Like Itโs Stolen\, his sixth full-length. Its 10 songs overflow with Hauseโs trademark urgency and passion\, shimmering with a truth that reflects the harsh realities of life in this day and age\, as well the intermittent jolts of joy that punctuate it. After all\, his songs have always detailed his own personal traumas and triumphs within the setting of an unforgiving capitalist backdrop\, tethering those personal experiences to ineluctable external forces. 2013โs second album\, Devour\, for example\, was a response to his divorce from his first wife\, while 2019โs Kick saw him tackle hope\, depression\, global warming and a crumbling American democracy with the news that he was to become a father. Most recently\, on 2021โs Blood Harmony\, Hause wrote and sang about the positive impact of having twins\, and of the joy and excitement of being able to be at home with them for the first couple of years of the pandemic.Drive It Like Itโs Stolen is just as earnest and heartfelt\, raw and real as anything heโs ever written before. Yet thereโs also a subtle yet significant differenceโhere heโs delving into a more fictional type of storytelling to create what he terms "post-apocalyptic Americana.โ Thatโs clear from the title of this albumโs haunting and ominous opening song\, โCheap Seats (New Yearโs Day\, NYC\, 2042)โ. Set two decades in the future\, itโs obviously not about anything thatโs actually happened\, but is still very much inspired by life. At the start of 2022\, Hause was in a good place. Heโd changed his diet and had maintained a strenuous workout regimen resulting in improved physical and mental health. Feeling great\, heโd decided to go off Lexapro and left to go out on the Blood Harmony band touring.โI was feeling great\,โ he recalls. โI came back to work\, didnโt have my meds. But then Iโm on tour\, Iโm not working out\, Iโm not eating that way anymore. And Iโm really faced with the American city\, the American experiment post-pandemic. Weโre going places and being like\, โOh\, my God\, this is what Portland and San Francisco and Los Angeles look like.โ And it looked terrifying. Whenever I went anywhere\, I felt like I was watching the prequel to 12 Monkeys\, except I was also living it and just wondering what the fuck was going on. The tour was doing well\, but it just felt like my mental health was falling down stairs. A few months later\, when we were finishing the tour\, we heard stories that people were siphoning gas out of tour buses. So\, a lot of the record was kind of born of and trying to wrestle with that.โTo that extent\, the future dystopia of โCheap Seatsโ is very realโa vivid depiction of a society on the verge of collapse based on Hauseโs experience as a touring musician and then filtered through his imagination. If โCheap Seatsโ sets the tone with its dream of escape from a ravaged New York City\, then song โPedal Downโ starts that road trip. Itโs a gloomy\, glowering\, dark early morning ride through desolate\, post-apocalyptic streets\, whose atmosphere really places you inside that car. A moody and monochrome song full of portent and hope in equal measure\, itโs both a literal journeyโcaptured by the albumโs striking cover\, which replicates the view of one of his twins in the back seat as the family drives awayโand a metaphorical exploration of Hauseโs fears and anxiety of being a parent in modern day America. โBut we lead our lambs to slaughter\,โ he sings. โItโs profit\, boot straps\, and guns/Every god needs a sacrifice/Honey\, what have we done?โ On one level itโs a simple question directed at his wife about having kids. On another\, itโs tackling the whole American system.โHaving children sounds like a great idea\,โ he explains\, โand then you realize that theyโre grist for the mill. Theyโre grist to be sold to\, theyโre to be exploited\, and theyโre potentially fodder for our passion for guns. If your god in America is the gun\, the idea that we must have these guns\, then gods need sacrifices and our children are those sacrifices. And you wonder\, โDid we bring children in this world to sacrifice them to the various American gods?โ Thatโs another thing weโre kind of grieving. Weโre all complicit in this\, and weโre all potentially going to have to pay.โThe disturbing\, apocalyptic quasi-reality of the albumโs lyrics is matched and amplified by the music. Written by Hause with his younger brother Tim\, Drive It Like Itโs Stolenโjust like the three that preceded it\, as well as Timโs 2022 debut full-lengthโis the distinct next phase of their creative partnership. The third release on the brothersโ own Blood Harmony record label\, it shakes up expectations while at the same time building off the sound and reputation Hause has established for himself over the past decade or so. โDamn Personalโ\, for example\, is a boisterous blue collar anthem about lost friends thatโs charged with electric emotion\, while the uplifting\, Petty-esque โHazard Lightsโ ruminates on Hauseโs sobriety and the temptation that exists when heโs around friends who still imbibe. Yet though thereโs a specificity to those lyrics\, theyโre easily applicable to other situations\, too.โThat feeling of having the hazard lights on\,โ says Hause\, โitโs just uncertainty. Iโm kind of just pulled over hereโI donโt know where Iโm going\, I know where Iโve been\, the hazard lights are blinking\, so please donโt hit me because Iโve got to figure out what to do next.โElsewhere\, thereโs โchainsaweyesโ and โlashingoutโ\, two very halves of the same whole that once again merge personal anxieties with universal horrors. Both ask important questions about identity and parenthood and responsibility and the difficulties of raising children in America. The former is backed by dramatic strings that emphasize the importance of the subject matter\, while the latter begins as a beautifully poignant acoustic tune before descending into a marvelously unexpected piano breakdown that wouldnโt be out of place in a saloon sometime in the 1800s. Donโt be deceived by what Hause calls the โsugarโ of that part\, thoughโthereโs still an important message underpinning it.โBoth those songs are trying to assess that angry\, always devouring\, youthful\, testosterone-fueled American boy thing\,โ explains Hause. โRaising boys in America\, you donโt want to fall on the wrong side of history with that. In โlashingoutโ\, that person who sings โI want to be God for a dayโ at the end could be a school shooter. That wish could be something that would prompt someone to do something terrible. Why would you want that power? You could really hurt people. But hereโs the thingโwe all feel like lashing out like that at points. But what is it thatโs prompting this feeling that you want to change everything\, and do you have it right? Are you righteous in that anger of wanting to lash out?โDrive It Like Itโs Stolen was engineered and mixed by David Axelrod\, andโlike Blood Harmonyโproduced by Will Hoge and recorded at Santi Sound in Nashville\, though with a different set of musicians than that albumโs all-star cast. Yet thatโs not to the recordโs detriment at all. On penultimate song โTarnishโ\, a song about both a life lived and one still being livedโpast and present coalescing in a beautiful mesh of wistful self-reflection\, Hause sings โI never got a golden record/I guess the melodies were wrong.โ The performance and production of not just that song\, but this whole record\, proves that sentiment entirely wrong. Itโs followed by โThe Vultureโ\, a song that harks back to the defiance that dominated Kick but which is recast with his
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