Album Review – The Droptines – “Drought Flower”

Alt-Country (#564) and Rock (###) on the Country DDS. AI = “Clean”

Some people come to music to listen. Others come to feel. It’s the pain they crave like emotional junkies, searching for an especially incisive lyric to move over them like cold serrated steel raking across the skin. Those musical masochists have found a new poison in the form of the Texas alt-country band The Droptines, named for the irregular antlers of a deer that face down instead of up—“tines” like those on a fork, not “teens” like your pimpled nephews.

Turn back now if you’re looking for heavy doses of twang or Howdy Doody put-ons. Even labeling The Droptines “alt-country” is a little bit of a stretch. They’d be a rock band if that genre wasn’t in disarray itself. But steel guitar, banjo, and other country-inspired tones do play a role in their sound, as do their Central Texas roots, and sometimes a significant one. But all of these things are secondary to the song.

Frontman Conner Arthur is one of those emotional wrecks of a songwriter, pinballing between relationships and states of inebriation, scribbling down his most severe and intimate thoughts in-between, ranging between self-righteousness and self-loathing, with women almost always inspiring the subject matter. There’s no attempt to allude to anything, or sugar coat the sentiments. It’s the stark, brutal honesty and rawness that rapts your attention.

The songs of The Droptines are more propulsive than poetic, but no less resonant when they meet the ear and marinate in the gray matter. It’s less about sentimentality, and more about unsettledness and internal conflict. You could even call the music a little chauvinistic in moments with the way Connor Arthur sometimes toys with his female counterparts, if he wasn’t so often repulsed by his own behavior himself, and Zandi Holdup and fellow Central Texas native Sarah Jarosz didn’t guest on tracks.

And though Connor presents a sort of unrefined character, the music itself—especially compared to their 2024 self-titled debut—comes with a curious dose of compositional prowess. This is not a band of superpickers. It is songwriting set to rock music. But the use of stops and rhythm changes compliment their involved melodies that aren’t worn out after a few listens, while the lyricism often leaves things to explore and unlock the second or third time through as well.

A song like “Tombstone” feels downright anthemic with the way the indie rock guitar riff leads into a chorus that lift’s Conner’s imperfectly appealing “lived it” vocal delivery. There is no latency between these songs and the moments that inspired them. It’s all right there in the lyric sheets. You can perfectly picture the woman who inspires the title track to Drought Flower.

“What Ate My Friend,” “Whatever It Is,” and “Take Too Much” all speak the to tenuous nature we all must navigate trying to land on our own to feet as adult humans. “Old Tricks” speaks the intimacy that’s so hard to extract yourself from in a failed relationship.

Their cover of Mike McClure’s “Calling All Cars” feels like a bit off an oddball in the experience after you become so fond of Connor’s own writing, but you allow it after subsequent listens. The final song on the album “Grand Canyon” is one of the album’s best, and does show more poetic notions, probably because it was composed by Stephin Merritt, not Connor Arthur.

The Droptines and Drought Flower deliver something nobody else currently is in the music space. It’s reminiscent of early Drive-By Truckers or American Aquarium. Connor Arthur will have the opportunity to write his songs about settling down or maybe finding sobriety at some point. But for now, he captures in the tumultuous throes of young middle adulthood, trying to find his heart, sometimes losing himself in the process, while reminding us all of moments when the emotions sat thick in the air, and life was still raw to the senses.

8.2/10

Along with Connor Arthur, The Droptines feature Dillon Sampson on bass, drummer Johnny Sheets, guitarist Donny Parkinson, and steel guitar player Tony Rincon.

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Stream/Download Drought Flower, or purchase on vinyl.