Virtual Listening Party: Joe Troop & The Truth Machine’s Self-Titled EP
Go on a song-by-song exploration of the new protest-song-focused record from Troop’s newest band.
Joe Troop & The Truth Machine’s self-titled EP artwork.
In true “O Brother Where Art Thou” fashion, Joe Troop’s latest musical iteration calls back to the trouble of a seemingly simpler time. The GRAMMY-nominated songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, whose musical collaborations have included Larry & Joe and Che Apalache, uses the lens of late-Depression-era music as an invitation to view our current world through the fallout of one of the United States’ great tragedies. While listening to Joe Troop & The Truth Machine’s new self-titled EP, it’s hard not to draw parallels from the tragedies of that time to our current-day societal struggles.
(Click on each song title to listen along on YouTube while you read about them!)
The chorus of the opening song is biting irony wrapped up and delivered with hillbilly charm and blistering bluegrass:
Billionaires will set us free
they’re sent from God
to save a wretch like me
before their wondrous wealth
I kneel upon the ground
to gleefully receive whatever trickles down
The call and response format of this song puts a laser-pointer focus on the blind faith our country has appeared to place in the moneyed class. Hearing each line twice drives home the ridiculousness of the political path upon which we find ourselves. Though the sound is homespun, the satire is finely sharpened and surgical. Troop and company know deeply of what they sing.
Elon’s in his spaceship
He’s flying off to Mars
Jeffrey’s in his mega yacht
Sipping pinot noir
The rest of us got left behind
To count our lucky stars
And we’re all going down together
The ensemble drifts this song into every delightful down-home curve and biscuits-and-gravy twist. Much like responding to light G-forces while riding in a speeding car, the vocals of Joe Troop, Lu Furtado, and Olivia Fernandez slide across the seat and execute melodic precision in the swerves. “Running From The Weather” is a car chase—rocket-fueled Flatt & Scruggs for the modern era. Troop & The Truth lean heavily into their homespun twang, while leaving so much lyrical space. The words and their meaning are front and center. “Runnin’ From The Weather” firmly establishes: this is a political protest album.
There’s an exaggerated Beverly Hillbillies vibe to this song that is sweet as molasses, while the lyrics are the undeniably bitter pill of confronting the dire nature of our current times. It is caricature drawn large, but rendered with delicate and wild artfulness.
Joe Troop & The Truth Machine. Photo courtesy of the artists.
After two searing tracks about the heart-rending troubles in the world, “Sweat Pea” is a balm. A pure and true song of love is a respite. Listening to “Sweet Pea,” the heart rate slows, and you fall in love with Joe Troop’s voice as he sings, “Got it mostly wrong, but I got it right a time or two.”
There is nothing to second guess in this track. The melody is an intricate and complex series of dance steps that trace the outer edges of pure beauty. The Truth Machine takes brief respite in this universal truth: True love is where it is at.
Throw your engines into overdrive
Oil fires burning at warp speed
Push that pedal to the metal, child
In the morning, in the nighttime, babe
And for all eternity
There may be the urge to listen to this album and regard the music as loose and plainspoken, but The Truth Machine runs through key changes in such a deft, smooth manner that they may be easy to miss. They repeat phrases and stretch the limits of the listener’s expectations of what is a verse and chorus then rein it all back in to the original construct.
Troop’s banjo virtuosity is front and center here as he bends and plucks, stops and starts in delightful syncopation, all while edging a toe over the line into blues a time or two. “Overdrive” will make sure you understand why Joe Troop deserved a Grammy nomination.
The vocal harmonies on this track in particular are deeply dextrous while working hard to give the feel of something hand-hewn, something rustic. Make no mistake, although Joe Troop & The Truth Machine make it sound easy, this song, most certainly, is the result of deep and jaw-dropping skill.
Who’s gonna send for your mother
Longing for her son?
Why aren’t we there for each other?
Mercy is for everyone
Nowhere is The Truth Machine’s skillful handle on our current times more apparent than in the final track on the EP. This could easily be an R&B song, but the bluegrass strings bend the genre of this song in a gorgeous way. In his duo Larry & Joe, Joe Troop uses traditional stringed instruments in ways that can only be described as orchestral. Troop’s outside-the-box skill is well-played here too, surprising and infinitely lovely.
Troop uses his rich tenor to navigate R&B melodic phrases in a smooth and bluesy way over the pluck and cluck of banjo and mandolin arpeggios that could easily be played in an orchestral setting. There is a genuine and abiding honesty in this songwriting and in the way this song is delivered. Given the winter of ‘26 in Minneapolis, Joe Troop is writing here for all of us.
The truth of The Truth Machine?
We’re on a dangerous path in this country.
Love is the way forward.
Mercy is indeed for everyone.
This band came to PLAY!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Doyle Turner. Photo credit: no_aesthetic_stills.
Doyle Turner loves words. Whether it is shaping syllables into songs, poems, early morning journals, handwritten thank yous, lists, or album reviews, he is in a deep and abiding relationship with his college-ruled paper, Uniball Signo 207 .7mm pens, and mostly his keyboard. A good day is spent taking pictures, mailing things, making the words convey the precise meaning, driving, and singing.
