LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES

Youth Detention (Nail My Feet Down To The Southside Of Town)

Race, class, truth, youth and identity explored in Southern band’s cowpunk third LP. By Peter Watts

Few regions celebrate and interrogate themselves in song as eloquently as the American South. Alabama songwriter Lee Bains has immersed himself in this territory on two albums with the Glory Fires, and on Youth Detention takes another deep dive into place, race, and the complications of God and class in his birthplace of Birmingham. with 17 songs spread over 60 minutes, Bains effects a thundering Southern cowpunk to explore intersecting stories, rooted in autobiography but speaking of shared truths and moments of unity in a city tainted by racism. A follow-up to 2014’s Dereconstructed, Youth Detention takes the argument further and deeper, offering a rich and personal survey of a complicated past. “I Can Change!”, pitched roughly halfway through, could be the key text. A garage rock slammer, it opens with recordings of people chanting, “We have nothing to lose but our chains,” before Bains draws out a crowded city scene where “ladies in hats gather in the slanting shade of the Confederate obelisk.” This prompts the self-empowering chorus – “It was like taking a breath when I admitted that/Guilt is not a feeling, it’s a natural fact.” As Confederate monuments are removed from New Orleans, the song gets to the heart of the Southern contradiction. New Orleans – like Birmingham – is a largely black city whose residents are deeply rooted in the South and who have shaped its culture and the way it is perceived, but whose ancestors were enslaved by the people celebrated by these monuments.

By explicitly rejecting and admitting complicity in that history, Bains tackles the problem directly. “You need to confess before you can repent,” he says over the phone from Atlanta. Songs are placed firmly within the specific geography and history of Birmingham and draw on personal memories, as Bains feels he can only be truthful when writing about his own experiences. The album is about identity and youth – how children are “socialised” to understand the divisions of race, place and class, the way they conform to these labels and the way they can be subverted. Kids crops up again and again, thrown together and pulled apart by city life. On the Dead Kennedysstyle “Good Old Boy”, Bains skewers the hypocrisy of teachers, while “Had To Laugh” and “Black And white Boys” could soundtrack a Richard Linklater coming-of-age movie. The Stonesy ramble “Crooked Letters” features an innocent children’s chant while Bains sings of

the reception afforded a new classmate from the Middle east: “The boys demand to know if he’s white or black.” with such overlap in location, concept and genre, it’s hard to escape the shadow of DriveBy Truckers, and Youth Detention bears comparison with DBT’s best Southern epics. wary of repeating or typecasting themselves, the Truckers had turned away from explicit Southern themes until last year’s American Band. But where that album was angry and pessimistic,

Youth Detention bursts with optimism. On rejectionist anthem “white wash”, Bains sings of children as the “tiny flowering redemptions of sharecroppers and miners

and slaves”, punky opener “Breaking It Down!” celebrates solidarity across racial division while joyful finale “Save My Life!” eulogises the liberating power of music.

Bains admits the influence of British bands like The Kinks, Jam and Blur, but also ’80s college rockers such as The Primitons, Let’s Active and ReM. These can be heard in the jangly singalong “I Heard God!”, and “Underneath The Sheets Of white Noise”, a celebration of the city as a place of meeting and opportunity with a rhythm redolent of Michael Stipe. Another influence is Flannery O’Connor and, like a short story writer, Bains takes a fleeting moment and uses it to represent a whole. Songs are short but wordy, with scenes and themes repeating and cross-referencing each other. Taken as a complete piece of work, it’s dense, thoughtful and whole.

Undercutting the literary quality of the lyrics, the music is lowdown and dirty. The Glory Fires are Birmingham natives and Youth Detention was recorded live. That lack of studio finesse gives the LP an edge, though it means you have to strain to hear the vocals at times. The method was deliberate. Bains sings about chance encounters that help shape a person, and recording Youth Detention he hoped to recreate that sense of happenstance. This feel for authenticity chimes with a core sentiment – the importance of truth in retelling the history of America, race, class and the South and in rock’n’roll itself. “It

don’t matter how good it sounds,” Bains sings on the soul rock groove of “Trying To Ride”, “don’t you ever sing a lie.”