ALBUM REVIEW: Jason Boland and the Stragglers return to their roots on ‘Last Kings of Babylon’

The new Jason Boland and the Stragglers album closes with an image right out of Steinbeck: “Lonesome travelers and rambling types / shuffling down some unknown trail tonight,” Boland sings in “Buffalo Return,” penned by late Oklahoma songwriter Jimmy LaFave. “In your hobo jungles and your boxcar dreams / living only by your ways and means.” The Last Kings of Babylon’s final track rides an airy shuffle, its acoustic guitars and mandolin offering gentle reassurance to people with nothing but scrappiness to carry them forward.

“One step ahead of the rules and laws,” Boland sings in his rich baritone. “Oh brothers and sisters, you’ve seen it all”

For 25 years, Jason Boland and the Stragglers have cranked out remarkably consistent Oklahoma Red Dirt country. With time and experience, they’ve become a tight and technical band unafraid of taking risks. To that point, The Last Kings of Babylon follows 2021’s The Light Saw Me—an ambitious concept album about cowboys, time travel and alien abduction that is easily among the Stragglers’ finest work. For Last Kings, Boland got his hands back in the Oklahoma dirt, where distorted guitars meet unpretentious country music with an independent streak.

“Ain’t no justice / ain’t no justice in this world,” Boland belts in “Ain’t No Justice.” “It’s just us / it’s you and me now, girl.” Originally by fiddler Randy Crouch, the Boland version is a bluesy, driving country-punk barnburner built on three truths: society is broken; I’m broke; we have each other. In a similar vein, “Ain’t No Justice” is followed by “Farmall,” in which a farmer hauls rural folk into town with his tractor to vote out a crooked sheriff. The law may not be reliable, but love and neighbors are.

Last Kings is Boland’s most country-forward album in a decade or more, having more in common sonically with early records like Comal County Blue. Coincidentally, Red Dirt country is having a moment. In April, for one example, The Stragglers will join ascendant (after a long career and a hiatus…) scene mates Turnpike Troubadours for a multi-night Red Dirt celebration at Oklahoma State University’s football stadium.

Among his peers, Boland has always been particularly outspoken: pro-labor, pro-weed, anti-authority. “There is a method to keep us in line / a natural circle that I stay outside,” Boland sings on standout track “One Law at a Time.” “I’m under the radar, so I don’t have to hide / breaking one law at a time.” With its slow three-count and huge, distorted chords, it’s an expansive, enveloping song—a welcoming, reassuring message from the junction of counterculture and country music.

Jason Boland and the Stragglers’ The Last Kings of Babylon is out March 14 via Proud Souls Entertainment