New Music Tuesday - Drive-By Truckers

Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creations Dark
4 out of 5
First things first: Rock Band. Is. The. Most. Fun. Video. Game. I. Have. Ever. Played. Ever. I need to play that game with the basement crew, because it is unbelievably fun. Played it first for free at a rec center with a guy and we played for like 4 hours straight. Then he ended up buying it and we put it on a projector on the side of a building and a huge group of us played. I almost lost my voice, and eventually had to be the goto guy on the drums because no one else could keep up on medium difficulty. Incredibly fun. Ok, on to the review.

Check out this video: A Ghost To Most



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The Drive-By Truckers lost one of their songwriters/vocalists with the departure of Jason Isbell to pursue a solo career. Original writers and singers Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley remain, however, and bassist Shonna Tucker has stepped up and penned a few songs and lent her amazing (and unreleased, until this album) vocals. At 19 songs, Brighter might seem like a hefty serving, but the tracks seem to roll into each other so continuously that the album doesn't drag, despite a huge variety of different styles thrown down on this record.

The album is a continuation of the DBT's investigation of "The Duality of the Southern Man," and the listener is once again thrust into the lives of the unlucky, the unhappy, and the unloved. Mike Cooley may have the better voice and a great writing style, but Patterson Hood steals the show on this one with some amazingly gripping songwriting. On opener "Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife," a man gets to heaven and doesn't understand where he is. And he left behind, you guessed it, two daughters and a wife. The song chugs along on rhythm guitar and banjo, but Hood's pleating voice combined with Tucker's complimenting backing vocals and the hollowness added by new guitarist John Neff's pedal steel (beautifully employed throughout the album) make it a haunting and lasting story.

Cooley has some fine songs as well, like "A Ghost to Most" and "Bob," the latter about a very simple southern man, who lives alone. In true to life fashion, the story of Bob is both humorous and sad, and DBT paint another story of someone you know or know of.

Shonna Tucker's voice is sultry and deep, similar to Neko Case. She only gets three songs this time out, but it's a nice break to hear her pretty and sad voice on tracks like "Purgatory Line," and her backing vocals balance Hood and Cooley's deep, rough voices nicely.

As I mentioned before, though, Hood steals the limelight with biographies like "The Righteous Path" ("Don't know God but I fear his wrath/ and I'm trying to stay focused on the righteous path"), "Daddy Needs a Drink" ("To calm down his badness/ to execute his gladness.../So Mama fix one quick/ pour it nice and strong"), and "The Homefront" ("And she paces 'cross the floor/ and she can't even get to sleep/ since Tony went to war"). The real winner on the album though is "That Man I Shot," a nightmarish and realistic portrayal of a soldier's troubles with his part in the war. All guitar feedback and frenetic pace, you can feel the man's inner struggle with the man he shot, as he "still can see him, when I should be sleeping, tossing and turning." Upon close listening you can even hear a woman's voice saying "Baby?" amidst the opening feedback, heightening the nightmare feeling. With haunting lyrics like "Sometimes I wonder if I should be there/ I hold my little ones until he disappears/ I hold my little ones until he disappears/ I hold my little ones until he disappears," it stands as one of the greatest songs written about our generation's war yet.

I highly recommend this album, and while I can't say there are no missteps across the 19 tracks, I can certainly forgive them because of the sheer amount of great music released on Brighter Than Creations Dark.

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MP3: Drive-By Truckers - Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife
MP3: Drive-By Truckers - That Man I Shot