The Pinkerton Raid map out the beautiful way that The Highway Moves The World with their tenderly revealing and gracefully uplifting new single and video — premiering exclusively on Tinnitist.
The title track and thematic linchpin of North Carolina band’s most recent album, The Highway Moves The World sits at the nexus of indie-folk and Americana, handily encompassing the band’s two distinct sonic personalities. Anchored by a distorted, tube-driven Fender Rhodes piano, fingerpicked electric guitar arpeggios, languidly shuffling drums and a trumpet fanfare from Holy Ghost Tent Revival’s Charlie Humphrey, the track outlines how the Interstate connects us. It celebrates the familial bond between touring musicians on the road. And it also shares the story of frontman (and Pedro Pascal doppelganger) Jesse James DeConto’s family as they struggled to stay together against the odds and economic hardships of modern life:
“I am 27 years old, my baby’s almost four
You meet us in the labor ward, 3,000 miles from home
You still wash my sister’s clothes, my brother needs to learn to shave
You’ve got five babies of your own, with mine we seven make.
“Your mom and dad in Florida, your brother, sister, Boston town
You leave your friends and bring the rest, my brother, sisters, all your best
You convalesce our broken home, my babies miss their mother
You hold ’em close into your heart, and that’s where they find home.”
“The Highway Moves The World narrates how my family stayed together across moves up and down the East Coast; the thread of the story is love,” says DeConto. “”My mom was splitting time between New Hampshire, where I grew up, and Florida, where my grandparents needed help. Around the time I moved to North Carolina with my pregnant first wife and our preschooler, my parents moved with my two youngest siblings to Florida. My mom spent the next couple of years driving up and down the East Coast, taking care of her youngest kids and her parents in Florida, her business and her almost-independent teens in New Hampshire, taking care of me and her grandkids in North Carolina. Eventually, the whole family moved to North Carolina.”
DeConto recorded most of The Highway Moves The World in February 2020. Along with bassist Jonathan DePue, drummer Scott McFarlane and guitarist Garrett Langebartels, he planned to celebrate with a full play-through of the dozen songs at an intimate church in their home base of Durham. They planned to release the single Dream The Sun for the same day — the last Friday of March. By the middle of the month, it became clear that the show would not happen.
Almost three years later, the post-pandemic renewal brings a totally new lineup — another gang of friends to complete The Pinkerton Raid’s earthy, full-hearted sound. Now including guitarist / trumpeter / keyboardist Luis Rodriguez and bassist Derek Skeen, they have recently played festivals from Georgia to Ohio, sharing stages with Liz Cooper, The Bones of JR Jones and The Nude Party.
Fittingly, the posture of possibility permeates The Highway Moves The World. Produced by David Wimbish (who also contributed guitars and keyboards), its 12 songs were inspired by Jesse’s closest relations — the people have the power to deliver great joy and wonder or profound betrayal and disappointment, and who stand in for the people beloved by all of us. “These songs are sketches of particular experiences that I think capture the personalities, gifts and wounds of my parents, my siblings, my partner, my kids and some chosen family,” says DeConto. “But it’s not just that — there’s something universal and representative about each of these individuals: my wife and daughter reckoning with patriarchy; the richness and friction of difference within families; the joy and pain of solidarity and sacrifice; the human spirit and the nature spirits.”
The Highway Moves The World begins two decades ago in the DeContos’ leaky basement rehearsal space, where Jesse learned The Beatles and started to examine his own brand of woundedness as the 19-year-old eldest brother of five. The album’s songs traverse forest legends and foreign lands, blackjack games and French bistros, photo albums and feminist awakenings, all serving as the sets and props for human drama of the most genuine kind. By the end of the journey, we return to Merseybeat, with its garden parties, echoes of Eleanor Rigby, and Liverpool legend Gerry Marsden showing up in the lyrics with a simple message, “don’t walk alone.” Bringing us back full circle to DeConto’s basement, it’s a perfect summary of a life, a new record and a career now five albums deep.
Watch the video for The Highway Moves The World above, listen to the entire album below, and catch up with The Pinkerton Raid on their website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
