“Most personal album yet” is a well-worn cliché within the cliché-addled world of music promotion. But Life Behind Bars, the fifth studio album from beloved Texas country-punk ensemble Vandoliers, brings new meaning to that phrase. This album marks a series of firsts for the band, it’s their first release with upstart Break Maiden Records and distributed by storied indie Thirty Tigers, their first with Grammywinning producer Ted Hutt (The Gaslight Anthem, Flogging Molly, Lucero), and their first recorded at the sprawling Sonic Ranch studios in West Texas. Most importantly, though, this collection of songs offers a window into frontwoman Jenni Rose’s journey through addiction and gender dysphoria — a journey that has culminated in her decision to come out as a trans woman while working in the macho worlds of Texas country and punk rock, at a moment when the rights of trans people are more intensely threatened by the day.
For the uninitiated, even the most melancholy Vandoliers song has a degree of exuberance and verve, full of an irrepressible energy that has led the band to tour with everyone from Flogging Molly to the Turnpike Troubadours to fellow Dallas-Fort Worth natives the Toadies and the Old 97s. Their unique ability to bring together the worlds of the square-toed boot-clad hicks with the steel-toed boot wearing punks has helped the band find a devoted following across the world, fans who pack out shows that are always life-affirming and usually end with some Vandoliers hopping around onstage shirtless.
While the 10 tracks on Life Behind Bars are upbeat and sing-a-long-ready in classic Vandoliers fashion, they’re a little more stripped down and intimate than the band’s typical raucous fare. The title track has all the sharp observations and catchy melodies of Vandoliers’ best work, but with the added context and depth of Rose’s path to self-discovery. The album has more explicitly political tracks as well: “Bible Belt,” which Rose wrote about the fear and pain of feeling like an outsider deep in the Fort Worth suburbs, and “Thoughts and Prayers,” a darkly funny composition written and sung by Graves about the epidemic of gun violence in America.
These are the songs of a band that is fearless and fun, hellbent on spreading joy wherever they go, and who has made a career of pushing boundaries and taking all-comers — of making a bigger, brighter, bolder tent in a musical space that is still too often hidebound by tradition. “We’ve been breaking rules in country for 10 years,” says Rose. “‘You play too fast.’ ‘You’re too loud.’ ‘You’re more of a punk band.’ All that matters, though, is that people hear our songs and they help them in any way — that’s all we can hope for. I’m struggling so much on this record, but I hope that another person listens to it and finds something in it for themselves.”
