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Drive-By Truckers were formed in Georgia in 1996 by guitarists
Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley.
Their good-humored blend of roots-rock, ranging from cow-punk to southern
boogie, from Tom Petty to the
Rolling Stones, from
the Band
to Neil Young.
They honed their rustic skills on
Gangstabilly (1998), with the moving The Living Bubba and the
energetic Steve McQueen,
and on Pizza Deliverance (1999), with
Margo & HaroldThe Company I Keep.
Alabama Ass Whuppin' (2000) was a live album.
This first phase of their career peaked with
the double-disc The Southern Rock Opera (Soul Dump, 2001 - Lost Highway, 2002),
mostly recorded live in the studio,
which is both a rock opera and an explicit tribute to the three-guitar sound of
Lynyrd Skynyrd
(Hood's Ronnie And Neil,
Dead Drunk And Naked),
with moments of sheer pathos (such as Cooley's power-ballad 72) and
moments of sheer frenzy (such as the rock'n'roll of Cooley's Guitar Man Upstairs).
Hood's The Southern Thing, although placed in the middle of disc one,
is the album's manifesto. The second part of the disc has less to offer in
both musical and lyrical terms, although Hood's bar-room blues Wallace
and Malone's agonizing acoustic Moved pack as much passion as the
band ever did.
The music is a lot less engaging when the band focuses on the lyrics and
neglects the power chords.
Hood's vibrant Let There Be Rock and
Rob Malone's soul-funk Cassie's Brother
are the only winners in the second disc's first half.
The opera then picks up steam with a triad of loud and fast numbers:
the roaring boogie of Life In The Factory,
the breakneck rock'n'roll of Shut Up And Get On The Plane (with anthemic refrain a` la Bruce Springsteen),
and the no less rowdy and ebullient Greenville To Baton Rouge.
Hood's harrowing (and almost cacophonous) eight-minute elegy Angels And Fuselage closes the album on a sour note.
Following Malone's departure,
guitarist and songwriter Jason Isbell joined the band for
Decoration Day (New West, 2003), a cycle of songs (dominated by
Hood) about domestic and personal tragedies in a style far removed from the
Lynyrd Skynyrd-esque orgy of the previous album.
Thus the calvary begins with the
plaintive The Deeper In (replete with weeping guitars) and proceeds
with the frothing paranoia of Hell No,
the rollicking country-rock of My Sweet Annette,
the calm meditation of Heathens (with the best guitar interplay of the album),
the agonizing blues-rock of the lengthy Your Daddy Hates Me,
Isbell's elegiac Decoration Day (the tragic zenith of the album).
The vibrancy of the "rock opera" surfaces again
in the anthemic, punk-ish, galopping Sink Hole,
in Cooley's ebullient Marry Me,
in Cooley's Springsteen-esque heroic Do It Yourself,
and in the rocking Careless (originally composed in 1996).
All in all, that vibrancy is sorely missed.
The Dirty South (New West, 2004), their best-selling album, was another
concept devoted to myths of the south.
The album starts out on a vivid note with
Cooley's martial, ominous and discordant Where the Devil Don't Stay
and Isbell's solemn, noisy The Day John Henry Died, two of their
most poignant epics.
Hood captures the desperation of ordinary people in Puttin' People on the Moon
and then the horrors of history (again from the viewpoint of ordinary people) in The Sands of Iwo Jima. His ability to combine music and lyrics into
physical anguish has reached an almost demonic zenith.
At this point there is virtually no style that the band does not master,
from the vehement tirade The Buford Stick
to the old-fashioned hillbilly music Daddy's Cup,
from the Neil Young-ian distorted litany of Lookout Mountain
to Isbell's tender organ-tinged Goddamn Lonely Love,
without ever resorting to the Lynyrd Skynyrd-esque excesses of the "rock opera".
The poppier and slicker
A Blessing and a Curse (New West, 2006) contained
Cooley's Space City.
These three albums boasted a songwriting team that had few equals at the time,
slowly converging towards the baroque country-pop sound pioneered by
Wilco.
Isbell then left the band and launched a solo career with Sirens of the Ditch (2007).
Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley continued without Isbell and with two new
members, guitarist John Neff and keyboardist Spooner Oldham, on
The Dirt Underneath (2007), a rather inferior collection.
The overlong
Brighter Than Creation's Dark (New West, 2008) could have been
a killer mini-album if only the good material had been released, such as Hood's
mordant six-minute Neil Young-ian war requiem That Man I Shot,
furious and martial The Righteous Path and especially country opener
Two Daughters And A Beautiful Wife,
Cooley's Rolling Stones-ian Three Dimes Down,
stately country song Lisa's Birthday and especially his anthemic
Self-Destructive Zones,
as well as bassist Shonna Tucker's crystalline psalm The Purgatory Line.
The lengthy, cinematic The Opening Act is a late-night shuffle
that could have been livelier.
However that's enough to make it one of their most evocative and profound
collections.
(Written by Jakub Krawczynski)
Patterson Hood debuted solo with Killers And Stars (New West, 2004) and followed it up with Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs) (Ruth St, 2009).
Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit (Thirty Tigers, 2009) is Isbell's second studio album, credited to Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit.
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