Lucero’s dozenth album opens with drummer Roy Berry banging away on a cowbell, as though this Memphis band is about to launch into a sped-up “Honkytonk Women” or maybe a slowed-down “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Even before Ben Nichols starts singing about a chatty drunk ruining his whiskey neat, you know exactly where you are: You’re back at the bar. It’s the band’s natural environment, and at a moment when bar bands are an endangered species, it’s nice to find them holding down a stool on opener “One More F.U.” Inverting the sentimentality of Tom Waits’ teary barfly laments from the early ’70s, Lucero sound punchy, itching for a fight: “It wasn’t like I came here thinking, ‘Man, this bar is great to drink in’,” Nichols declares before telling himself, “It’s one more ‘fuck you,’ that’s it and I’m gone.” It’s one of his snappiest lyrics, but he knows he’s kidding himself. He’ll be hanging out for a few more rounds, a few more F.U.’s, and nine more songs.
After a handful of albums that prioritized southern gothic atmosphere over southern rock riffs, Lucero are back where they started. They’ve been playing barstool blues and ballads for 25 years now, cutting their teeth in the very joints they sing about and surviving even when most bars have replaced rock bands with jukeboxes or, worse, DJs. While Nichols still insists on referring to the women in his songs as “little girl,” there’s something impressive, even endearing about their longevity. Like the Hold Steady and the Drive-By Truckers—two other unkillable bands associated with the bar-rock trend of the 2000s—Lucero are still making solid albums that expand their catalogs in unexpected ways. Road dogs can learn new tricks, as the Moogs and moodiness of 2018’s Among the Ghosts and 2021’s When You Found Me proved.
Despite the suggestion of self-reckoning in its title, Should’ve Learned by Now is nothing so dramatic as a comeback or a return to form. Instead, they’re continuing to sharpen old ideas and update familiar themes. This is an album about drinking and the many reasons you do it: celebrating and commiserating, numbing yourself or finding perspective, getting your heart broken or breaking someone else’s. Lucero will even raise a glass to bad weather: The frantic “Macon If We Make It” is about waiting out a hurricane in some Florida watering hole while hoping you can get far enough inland before the worst of it hits. “At the Show,” on the other hand, captures the relatively innocent excitement of playing your first gigs at a venue you’re barely old enough to patronize. It’s simply sweet rather than bittersweet, as Nichols sings about catching the eye of a young woman in the crowd and the band conveys the thrill of youthful self-expression.
During their quarter-century together, Lucero have kept essentially the same lineup, beginning as a vocals-guitar-bass-drums quartet before adding multi-instrumentalist Rick Steff. Berry, still one of the most inventive drummers around, allows the band to be slippery, shifting tempo on a dime but never making a big deal of it (they’re a bar band, after all). Steff adds flourishes of E Street piano and Hi Rhythm organ, injecting these songs with a wryness that bounces off Nichols’ lyrics. On “Nothing’s Alright,” a breakup song that plays up the ambiguity of the title phrase, Lucero build tension and drama in small lurches from the rhythm section and sideways glances from Brian Venable’s guitar. There’s no rising action, no traditional crescendo; instead, you just find yourself in the midst of some emotional turmoil, the way a bad memory can come out of nowhere to sour your day.
Lucero have never been known for cracking jokes, but what really distinguishes Should’ve Learned by Now from their previous barroom musings is the humor in these songs. Nichols and the band are alive to the little ironies and indignities that anyone faces while searching for the bottom of a bottle. “Half of what runs through my head is bullshit I sell to myself,” Nichols explains on the title track. “And the other half ain’t well thought out.” And Steff plays his accordion solo on closer “Time to Go Home” with what sounds like an arched eyebrow and a shake of the head, as though he’s asked for Nichols’ keys too many times. They’re always the butt of their own jokes, which makes them good company for a late night but also makes these songs hit a little harder the next morning.
