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At various points in the decade or so that the Durham, North Carolina collective The Pinkerton Raid has been in existence, frontman Jesse James DeConto has been joined in the band by members of his family. It makes sense then that the band’s latest two-sided single draws inspiration from those close family ties.
DeConto, now joined in The Pinkerton Raid by bassist Jon DePue and drummer Scott McFarlane, penned the thunderous A-side “Cinnamon Sweet” as a nod to a playful nickname he has for his wife. The song warns any would-be paramours off trying to corral the dynamic titular girl: “Her curves are not for your caress/Eyes up, my friend, you know how this ends.”
The unspoken context derived from his wife’s ire about being catcalled and harassed on the street. “What is cinnamon?” DeConto asks by way of explaining the song. “It’s sweet and hot at the same time, burns your lips. I started thinking about that as a metaphor for this fire for justice in her, not willing to put up with it anymore and finding a voice to put these guys in their place when they objectified her. Watching my wife find empowerment in this #MeToo movement.”
As for the engaging B-side “Au Cheval,” the title came from a Chicago restaurant with a famously desirable cheeseburger. And the seize-the-day ethos (“Suck the marrow from the bone”) comes from DeConto’s adventurous younger brother, whose willingness to wait hours in line for said cheeseburger provided evidence of his joie de vivre.
“He’s just a person who tries to get the most out of life,” DeConto explains. “He enjoys a lot of things that other people might see as extravagant or risky or decadent. There’s not a burger in the world I would wait four hours for. It just captured who he is, that he would appreciate this special experience that other people wouldn’t have time for. It symbolized going after it, the decadence and the risk-taking, not wanting to miss out on the fullness of life.”
Fans of The Pinkerton Raid might notice a bit of a departure on these and other recent singles relative to the band’s last full-length, 2018’s Where The Wildest Spirits Fly, a mellower affair. The band’s upcoming album promises more of the ground-shaking, hip-swaying sounds found on these tracks, which were produced by David Wimbish.
“That record ended up being pretty folky and trying to fit into that early 70s pop-folk vein of people like Cat Stevens or Simon & Garfunkel, certainly the Beatles,” DeConto says of Where The Wildest Spirits Fly. “It was very openly and consciously trying to sound classic. I was happy with how that turned out, but I didn’t feel that pressure anymore. I did that thing. With this upcoming record, I think it was more let’s just see where each individual song takes us. Where it took is us is something that’s much more aggressive and more physical. Something that is dynamic in a more muscular way and not so much built on the gentle swells and recessions of folk music. It’s more rocking and more danceable.”
“I think that has a lot to do with playing for enough years together with Jon and Scott. We just developed more playing together. I think any time you’re a singer/songwriter, especially if you gravitate as I do toward classic melody, there are tried and true ways for a rhythm section to fit into that. But I think with this one, I let them push me a little more out of the singer/songwriter mold and more to what we want to sound like as a band. I also developed my interest and my skills as an electric guitar player during that time. It gave me more colors to paint with than I had before.”
Yet even as The Pinkerton Raid branches out with these exciting new tracks, Jesse James DeConto won’t forget his heritage. “I developed as a musician playing with my family in early adulthood,” he says. “That definitely has shaped me. I feel like my human identity is shaped by my relationships and that comes out in songs. This particular batch of songs has manifested that in a much clearer way. This is the fifth record that I’m making here. I’ve definitely written songs about family members before, but never a whole batch like this.”