The Tillers have been two things since before it was cool. They’ve been playing old-time string music and they’ve been writing forthright, political music since well before the election of our 45th president. For better or worse, it’s the Tillers’ timelessness that makes their fourth studio effort urgent and refreshing. Their nine original songs detailing the struggles of working people amidst a newly plain-faced wave of hatred fits right at home with a revamped cover of Woody Guhtrie’s “All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose.”
There’s a lot of political music coming out these days, of course, but to me the songs that have the most impacts are the ones produced by people for whom raging against the system has always been a core part of their identity (and therefore songwriting.) The Tillers has a punk rock sensibility with old-time aesthetics. Unlike most people who try to bridge that gap, though, the Tillers as a band are grounded in their identity of a band that preserves traditions while speaking truth to modern powers, bridging the gap between their forebears and today convincingly and authoritatively.
The Tillers — Official, Facebook, Purchase from Sofaburn Records
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