Nathaniel Rateliff is trying not to call And It’s Still Alright a “divorce and death” record, but even he admits that’s… not inaccurate. “Yeah, that’s a pretty gnarly way to describe it,” he says, laughing, “but I guess it’s kind of that.”
It’s not the kind of album you might expect from the guy who made the S.O.B. anthem into a tent revival. No horns, no night sweats, just Rateliff alone with a guitar, a wounded heart, and enough ghosts to fill a church basement. His friend and collaborator Richard Swift had just died. His marriage had ended. And somehow, through all of it, he wrote a record that still believes in tomorrow.
“There’s a darkness in it, yeah,” he says. “But I always want there to be something more than that. It can’t be completely fatalistic.”
You can hear him trying to wrestle the light out of the dark in nearly every song. The title track wanders through grief, unsure what it’s even trying to say—until it lands, weary but still upright, like a boxer who refuses to stay down. “I was unsure what I was writing about as it was coming out on the page,” he says. “It kind of happened in front of me.”
For longtime fans of Rateliff’s pre-Night Sweats days—his solo folk work, the vulnerable stuff—it’s a return home. For everyone else, it’s a peek into a quieter side of a man who usually stomps across the stage with a horn section behind him and a sweat-drenched shirt clinging to his chest. “This kind of record lets me stretch a little,” he says. “There are things I want to write that just don’t fall into place with what the Night Sweats are.”
He’s not just talking sonics. Lyrically, these songs are barbed wire wrapped in silk. “All or Nothing” features a vocal performance that even caught his fellow songwriters off guard. “They were like, ‘New voice, huh?’” he laughs. “I don’t know. It didn’t feel like a character—it just came out that way. So I let it be that thing.”
But Rateliff isn’t some lonely bard cloistered in pain. He’s also launching a cannabis brand with Willie Nelson. Because why not. “Willie’s Reserve is based in Colorado, and so are we,” he says. “So yeah, we got to do some vape pens, some flower. It’s been fun.”
And in the most surreal twist of all, the Night Sweats got to open for The Rolling Stones in 2019. “Nobody will ever be that band again,” Rateliff says. “No matter how successful modern bands get, they’ll never have that kind of impact. They were writing the rules as they went. We don’t get to do that anymore.”
Still, Rateliff’s carving out his own kind of legacy. He talks about his mother, a working-class woman still hustling in her later years, and how that spirit is baked into his songs. On “Hey Mama,” the advice is both maternal and personal. “That one’s me talking to myself, too,” he says. “There’s so much more to do, even when things are difficult. There’s beauty in the struggle.”
There’s also beauty in simplicity. Despite a gold record and a meteoric rise, Rateliff’s life hasn’t changed much. “I live in a basement apartment. I’m not out here spending Moe’s money on expensive champagne,” he laughs. “I don’t feel like a rock star.”
He’s still working, still writing, still trying to wring some meaning out of the chaos. “Luckily I’m kind of a screw-up,” he shrugs. “So the material just keeps flowing.”
And yet And It’s Still Alright never wallows. Even in its quietest moments, it’s searching for something worth holding on to. Hope, maybe. Or at least the comfort of knowing we’re all just trying to get through it.
“I wanted people to feel like these songs were written for them,” Rateliff says. “That’s the beauty of songs—you think it’s about your life. And maybe it is.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
