Flatland Cavalry - Flatland Forever Review and Tracklist

November 8, 2024 3:26 pm GMT

Flatland Cavalry - Flatland Forever

Label: Interscope Records

Producer: Various

Release Date: November 8, 2024

Tracklisting:

1. No Shade of Green
2. Summertime Love
3. Missing You
4. Three Car Garage
5. One I Want
6. A Life Where We Work Out (with Kaitlin Butts)
7. Humble Folks
8. Lubbock
9. Come Back Down
10. Pretty Women
11. Sleeping Alone
12. War With My Mind
13. Some Things Never Change
14. Gettin’ By
15. Tilt Your Chair Back
16. Countryman
17. Mountain Song
18. How Long
19. Parallel
20. If We Said Goodbye
21. Mornings With You (Worktape)
22. Mornings With You (with Kaitlin Butts)
23. Spinnin’
24. Don’t Have To Do This Like That
25. Chasing A Feeling

[Scene 1: Some garage in Lubbock, Texas, 2014. With the scraps of a few songs and pockets full of promise, a ragtag group of young folk find themselves in the midst of becoming a band. The stage is set with two weathered chairs and a cooler – stocked, cold and Lite. Lights up. Music begins.]

“Memories paint the walls, tell our story / A modest montage / About you and me in our three-car garage…”

It’s been ten years since Flatland Cavalry, the beloved Lone Star state sextet, came to be, their humble beginnings traced back to a suburban haven similar to the one depicted throughout their latest single, the charmingly reminiscent ‘Three Car Garage’. The song is a small piece of Flatland Forever, the band’s newest release, which celebrates their last decade together.

The 25-track collection features a mix of classics, demos and never-before-heard offerings throughout the group’s career, numbers spanning their Come May, Humble Folks, Homeland Insecurity, Welcome To Countryland, Songs To Keep You Warm and Wandering Star eras. However, it’s more than just an anthology of hits and rarities. Flatland Forever is a chronicle of where the band has been and a road map charting what’s still ahead.

Across the release, the band rifle through heart-worn favorites, taking their time with the oldies but goodies and bringing fans along as they waltz down memory lane. It’s the new songs, though, the four fresh tunes – ‘Three Car Garage’, ‘Lubbock’, ‘Countryman’ and ‘Chasing a Feeling’ – peppered throughout the release, that seem to say the most.

[Scene 2: Amusement Park Recording Studio, Lubbock, TX, 2016. That same band is recording their debut album, Humble Folks. The sanguine but sturdy effort will soon introduce them to the world of country-Americana and set them on a path to, first, cult stardom and, eventually, to country mainstays. Music continues.]

“Take me home where the air is dry / And the cotton and the winter wheat grow knee-high / I tell ya friend, I ain’t seen a prettier sunset sky…”

In order to look forward to the next ten years, Flatland Cavalry – today, comprising vocalist Cleto Cordero, drummer Jason Albers, bassist Jonathan Saenz, guitarist Reid Dillon, multi-instrumentalist Adam Gallegos and Wesley Hall on fiddle – likely felt they had to, first, look back, something they do a lot of in Flatland Forever.

Even the new offerings are reflective and introspective as the group longs for simpler times, pondering the beautiful mundanity of ordinary days. Much like ‘Three Car Garage’, the bittersweet ‘Lubbock’ traces memories, pulling on nostalgia like a well-worn coat as the band reminisces about home and the place that set them on their journey all those years ago, a place they’ve carried with them since. In the same way, the sharp and staunch ‘Countryman’ finds them just as unchanging in their beliefs, proud of the people they’ve become. The dreamy waltz, ‘Chasing a Feeling’, sees them retrace their barroom beginnings – just kids playing seemingly inconsequential sets to incidental crowds – the byproduct of which is something they pursue even now.

While these new tracks, like the rest of the collection, seem just as caught up in the past, they harbor bigger, more vibrant sounds and hint at a new era that’s just on the horizon.

[Scene 3: The Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences, Lubbock, TX, November 8, 2024. The band is back in their old stomping grounds ten years later, gearing up to play a hometown show for the ages. The stage isn’t set with two weathered chairs or a stocked cooler. Instead, it’s just six friends who have become family and dozens of songs that have become their truth. Pockets are still plenty full of promise. Music continues, just as it always will.]

“I still smell cigarette smoke / Hear the beer bottles clink / They used to come from miles around / Just to hear me sing…”

While a project like Flatland Forever can seem, at moments, unnecessary and perhaps a little premature for a band that only recently became a household name among today’s mainstream, it’s an admirable endeavor as Flatland Cavalry honors how far they’ve come, the fans that have joined them along the way and the journey that’s still ahead of them.

It’s a brilliant collection, a stunning mix of the old and the new, the favorites and the often forgotten. It’s an album that reminds us, once again, that it’s more about the journey rather than the destination.

8/10

Flatland Cavalry’s 2024 project, Flatland Forever, is available now via Interscope Records.

For more on Flatland Cavalry, see below: