If Jason Boland sounds as if he’s holding up a mirror to his quarter-century-plus career in The Last Kings of Babylon, it’s because he’s feeling all kinds of introspective these days.
“As a songwriter, I have found that — for bands that record and write most of their own music — if the album doesn’t have some great force behind it, like a concept record, then it’s just what you’re going through,” Boland tells Rolling Stone about his 11th studio album. “It’s where you are in your life at the time.”
But if Boland sounds fresh and recharged in his music on The Last Kings of Babylon — defiant of the constraints, perceived or real, that he and his independent Red Dirt contemporaries have long felt — it may just be that country music is finally ready for Boland. Nearly every force driving the current renaissance in country music is one that…
