Lee Bains III & Glory Fires inaugurate Trump-era punk

Photo credit:

Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires’ forthcoming album, Youth Detention, is due out in May via New Brunswick, New Jersey label Don Giovanni Records. It’s purely a coincidence, but the politically-charged album arrives right around the time President Trump will be wrapping up his first 100 days in the Oval Office.

The songs on Youth Detention continue the group’s tradition of turning out galvanizing punk anthems rooted in Southern storytelling traditions. Like on the group’s previous two albums, Bains uses anonymous people and unnamed Southern towns to weave socio-political allegories that illustrate his complicated relationship with Southern culture.

Songs such as "Breaking It Down!" and “Sweet Disorder” rally against the prison system, and lost cause fallacies lie at the heart of “I Can Change.” Bains, an Atlanta resident, and his Birmingham, Alabama-based guitarist Eric Wallace, bassist Adam Williamson, and drummer Blake Williamson wrote the album before the presidential election’s outcome seemed plausible. Still, Bains’ critiques of Southern culture, which has grown increasingly politicized, ring true in 2017, more than ever before. “Now we have a guy in the White House who has elected on the backs of that politicization of culture,” Bains says. “The South I live in doesn’t point in a singular way to Donald Trump at all. He acts the way my grandmother taught me not to act. She taught me to be a good Southern boy, don’t do all the things this guy does.”

In Bains' South, there’s no shame in loving fishing, NASCAR, or college football; what’s shameful is ignoring or denying white privilege in the name of tradition. The band's ethically guided approach provides an eloquent frame for the kind of erratic, love-hate feelings that regional outcasts have for their hometowns. “Our songs are on the serious and earnest side of the spectrum,” Bains says. “A lot of folks say it’s kind of a buzzkill or too much. Something like this presidential election fallout is a little affirming for myself. It’s not just me off in a bubble thinking about this all the time.”

Bains’ dedication to Youth Detention’s socially-aware message necessitated the jump from indie giants Sub Pop, who had an option to release the follow-up to 2014’s Deconstructed, to Don Giovanni. "They were like, 'It's too long,'" Bains says. “Challenging is a word they used. They floated the idea of cutting some songs, and we didn’t want to do that. The whole thing is what we’d wanted to make."

A few months prior, Bains was talking with Joe Steinhardt at Don Giovanni about the New Alternative Music Fest in New Jersey. "They were doing it all with independent bands and no corporate sponsors," Bains says. "There are more and more corporate tie-ins for shows nowadays, so I thought it was a cool thing he was doing. When I heard that from Sub Pop I asked if he wanted to hear the record.”

Since election night, critics and social media have asked about a punk renaissance, comparable to Reagan-era hardcore. But punk never went away or curbed its socio-political fervor. Lee Bains is carrying on, telling stories, unraveling the complexities of his own Southern identity, and railing against political insanity — business as usual.

Lee Bains III & Glory Fires play the Earl on Fri., Jan. 27. With Illegal Drugs, A Drug Called Tradition, and Bitter. $10. 9 p.m. 488 Flat Shoals Ave. S.E. 404-522-3950. www.badearl.com.