Some bands age like cast iron: the scratches add flavor, and somehow the thing gets more useful the longer you keep it around. The Band of Heathens have always played like they were born in a room where somebody left the Wurlitzer on, the amps warm, and the door cracked for whoever has a harmony part.
Country Sides leans into that comfort without turning lazy. It is the sound of a road band with real chemistry choosing craft over chaos, but still leaving enough mess on the floor to prove it happened in real time.
Now
Country Sides arrived February 20, 2026 on the band’s own BOH Records, running 11 tracks and about 40 minutes. The title is a wink, but also a mission statement: these songs are built like staples, not stunt food.
The big tell is how it was made. The Heathens tracked it at their own studio, The Finishing School, in just over a week, self-producing with longtime collaborator Jim Vollentine. That schedule tends to shave off the preciousness and leave the point. You can hear it in the way the record moves: choruses land clean, guitars stay “greasy,” and the keys keep sneaking in like a friend who swears they are only stopping by for one drink.
Song titles alone sketch the worldview. “Lead Don’t Follow” comes in with the kind of chorus you can picture echoing back from the last row of a club. “Pleasing People” does the opposite: it stares down the exhausting noise of other folks’ expectations. And “Take the Cake” brings the swampy groove and electric piano to ask an old question in a fresh way: are you a taker or a giver? Even “High on Our Own Supply” reads like an independence pledge, the kind you can sing without needing to explain yourself.
Then
To understand why Country Sides works, go back to a moment when “alt-country” still felt like a mischievous idea scribbled on a bar napkin. Golden Smog’s Down by the Old Mainstream (1995) was a rotating-cast hangout record that treated country rock as a communal language, not a strict style guide.
The album is famously crowded: members from the Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, Wilco, and more passing guitars and verses around like a plate of fries. It is loose on purpose. “V” kicks the door open, “Ill Fated” and “Yesterday Cried” keep it scuffed and human, and the Tweedy and Louris co-write “Radio King” turns the whole thing into a singalong fever dream. There’s even a Ronnie Lane cover (“Glad & Sorry”) that signals the band’s real North Star: feel first, genre second.
If this comparison seems like a leap across scenes (Austin roots rock vs. Minnesota-adjacent supergroup sprawl), it is fair because both records treat “country” as a social space: a place where harmonies, barroom keys, and rock-and-roll guitars can argue, hug it out, and end up in the same chorus.
Parallels
The democratic lead vocal.
The Band of Heathens thrive on multiple voices, and Country Sides frames that as a strength, not a compromise. Golden Smog did the same thing a generation earlier, turning a potential identity crisis into the point of the record: different singers, different writers, one shared grin.
The barroom piano principle.
Both albums understand that keys are not decoration, they are glue. On Country Sides, the “barroom piano” and electric piano touches are part of the record’s heartbeat, especially when the groove gets swampy. Golden Smog’s record has that same “everybody pile in” energy, where organ and piano show up less like session polish and more like someone wandered over from the next room and sat down.
Breaks
Middle-age clarity vs. twenty-something mischief.
Country Sides is full of self-reliance talk and the hard-earned calm of a band taking stock. Down by the Old Mainstream is looser, prankier, occasionally too cute, and that’s part of its charm.
Tight focus vs. glorious sprawl.
Eleven songs, cut from a bigger batch, tracked fast, and aimed straight at the stage: that’s Country Sides. Golden Smog’s album is a big, shaggy set with room for left turns, covers, and inside jokes, the sound of friends seeing what sticks.
Liner Notes
If you want the family resemblance, play “High on Our Own Supply” into “Radio King.” One is an independence anthem built for modern road miles; the other is the original clubhouse chant, proof that a bunch of strong personalities can still agree on a chorus.
And if Country Sides is your entry point, don’t miss the deeper cuts on the “Then” side. “Ill Fated” and “Won’t Be Coming Home” show how vulnerability can ride shotgun with wisecracks, which is basically the blueprint for a lot of roots-rock that followed. The Heathens didn’t copy Golden Smog. They inherited the permission slip: make it communal, make it catchy, and let the fingerprints show.
About the author: Gainesville, FL area creative by day. Music is my muse. I host Twangville’s weekly Readers‘ Pick.