ZDAN - SO WHAT!

“There really is a fear that you get pigeonholed. But with every year that passes by, your give-a-fucks go down, and down, and down. We should all strive to get back to that, because it’s so freeing to be here," muses ZDAN in press materials. That thumb-biting liberation courses throughout her fourth studio record, SO WHAT!, on which she shatters the glass ceiling and demolishes the patriarchy with split-tongued lyrics. "So many rich white men standing around telling me what to do," she hisses with the opener, "Hell No."

That resolve bleeds into that fiery, no-fucks spirit that carries her through 10 songs of rebellion and retribution. In much the same way as 2018's Secretear dared to smash the musical establishment to tiny bits, SO WHAT! likewise crushes expectations, conventions, and pre-conceived notions about her music. She lives by no one's rules but her own, carving out a comfy place in roots-rock. "I lost myself in it, trying to get your attention / It doesn’t matter, you’ll get what’s coming to you yet," she caterwauls with the uproarious "Let It Out."

ZDAN wraps lyrical barbs around unbreakable musical stems. "Don’t act like some immoral god / All you can do is play guitar," she sings, with a lethal injection of venom, in the bridge of "Pink Lipstick." She later adds: "Gonna put my middle finger in the air 'cause I don’t care / I’m coming for you." She's clearly sharpened her songwriter's pen, which manifests as an album that should define her career.

With "Living is a Sin," she dismantles the right's obsession with controlling women and sends flares shooting across the sky like warning shots. "I don't believe in heaven / I don't believe in hell, and I don't think one man can save me / How can we be judged for just trying to live?" she considers, finding the entanglement with Christianity impossible to ignore. “I’m angry, as we all should be, and getting to use music as an avenue to stand up for these things couldn’t be more crucial," she notes in press materials.

ZDAN's SO WHAT! perfectly captures mutiny in America, a state of being where those with half a brain unabashedly fight the good fight. "Save Me (Rock 'N Roll)" grooves like a sidewinding serpent, as she overturns and uplifts bodily autonomy through heel-licking guitar flames. "How can you take away our right to choose, yeah, every day, I dunno," she snarls. "You know that we’re gonna do it anyway."

With some of Nashville's most talented, including Sturgill Simpson’s bassist Kevin Black, her husband Aaron Haynes (drums), and Joshua Grange (pedal steel), ZDAN speaks her mind with her whole chest. There's no misunderstanding SO WHAT! as anything other than a decree to never give in and never back down. Oh, and you might recognize Aaron Lee Tasjan and Molly Martin in guest appearance roles, as well.

We need albums like SO WHAT! now more than ever. While the world burns to the ground, we might as well rock hard on the way down.

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