Epic Re-Creation
Drive-By Truckers' latest reflects band's changes and plays to its strengths
By Chris Morris
I admit, with some shame, that I grasped Alabama’s Drive-By Truckers late in the game. My old Billboard colleague Ray Waddell was an outspoken early adaptor, and his ravings led me to pay attention to such ambitious DBT opuses as Southern Rock Opera (2001) and The Dirty South (2004). But it wasn’t until their April 2005 gig at the El Rey – an epic-length testimonial of power, commitment, and soulfulness – that I became convinced they were the best rock band in America.
Since that mighty exposition, the group has stayed busy while moving through a sometimes awkward and probably painful transition. After the release of last year’s tentative A Blessing and a Curse, singer-guitarist Jason Isbell left the group to pursue a solo career; his ex-wife, bassist Shonna Tucker, stayed in the fold. The Truckers enlisted longtime familiar John Neff as a full-time member on guitar and pedal steel, and brought veteran pianist Spooner Oldham – a session-mate of singer-guitarist Patterson Hood’s father, Muscle Shoals studio bassist David Hood – on board in the studio and on tour. They took a detour from their own work to support soul singer Bettye LaVette on her Grammy-nominated 2007 album The Scene of the Crime.
The new DBT collection, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark (New West), displays a reinvigorated and purposeful unit near the height of its powers. If the typically sprawling 19-song, 75-minute set isn’t quite perfect, it’s merely a reflection of the reconfigured group’s efforts to get all its ducks in line after a period of uncertainty.
Brighter marks the writing and lead vocal debut of Tucker, who heretofore has been restricted to harmony vocals. She acquits herself quite respectfully on her three tracks; while “I’m Sorry Huston” suffers from an unfocused arrangement, the Stonesy rocker “Home Field Advantage” and the ballad “The Purgatory Line” harbinger better things to come from her.
Founding members Hood and fellow singer-guitarist Mike Cooley rise to the occasion here, splitting the writing difference on the remaining cuts. Cooley embodies the group’s humorous side; his dry, deadpan drawl animates several hilarious character numbers about Southern eccentrics, wackos, and losers. His best contributions include the driving night-on-the-town tale “3 Dimes Down”; “Self Destructive Zones,” a droll look back at grunge’s heyday; “Lisa’s Birthday,” a laugh-out-loud portrait of a footloose party girl; and “Bob,” a shaggy-dog story about a ’Bama wastrel with a loopy mama and “more dogs than he ever had friends.”
Patterson Hood is the loudly beating heart of DBT, and he does yeoman’s service, penning nine tracks that muse as often as they blare. His work brackets the album, which opens with “Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife,” a wrenching remembrance for slain North Carolina musician Bryan Harvey and his family, and closes with “The Monument Valley,” a homage to director John Ford’s evocative landscape. In between, one finds such gems as “Goode’s Field Road,” a Southern derivation of Springsteen’s “Meeting Across the River”; “The Opening Act,” a view of life on the road from the bottom of the bill; “The Righteous Path,” a typically empathetic number about a good ol’ boy gettin’ by; and the woozy, condemnatory “You and Your Crystal Meth.”
Hood reaches his apex with two songs inspired by backstage meetings with Iraq war vets and their families. “The Home Front” is a short, affecting sketch of a serviceman’s wife mired in the hopelessness of the conflict. The crusher is “That Man I Shot,” a first-person recollection of combat’s horror and confusion, sung over a repetitive, clobbering riff played with the insistence of a recurring nightmare.
On Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, DBT re-emerge with a record that displays them at formidable strength. They always kick serious ass live, and they should prove it all night when they headline Avalon Hollywood on Tuesday, February 12. That’s my birthday, and I couldn’t ask for a better present.
Chris Morris hosts Watusi Rodeo on Indie 103.1 FM, every Sunday at 9 a.m.
Published: 01/23/2008
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