Drive-By Truckers: The Big To Do
Drive-By Truckers: The Big To Do
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By Adam Leveridge
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Monday, 15, Mar 2010 05:32
PIAS, out now.
What's it all about?
Heartbreaking, defiant, country-rock narratives. Drive-By Truckers' tenth album in just over as many years, The Big To Do continues along the course set by 2001's Southern Rock Opera - detailing the struggles and simple pleasures of everyday people in the Southern States of America, borrowing the very best bits of classic Southern country-tinged rock to help them do so.
Who's it by?
Drive-By Truckers are led by Patterson Hood and have had a revolving, evolving line-up over the years but currently also boast the considerable songwriting and performing talents of Shonna Tucker and Mike Cooley - who each contribute standout songs here. Cementing their classic rock credentials, the band last year provided backing to Booker T Jones on his new album, having previously played on Bettye LaVette's comeback and boasted Spooner Oldham as a part-time member.
As an example...
"On the second night of my drinking, I was looking for my car/And as luck would have it I found it parked outside my favourite bar/I had a leather liver and lipstick streaks/A disposition of valleys and peaks." - The Fourth Night Of My Drinking
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
The band's previous releases have been almost universally critically lauded - making them one of the best-kept secrets in American rock. The closest they have ever come to wider recognition was as backing band and producers to Bettye LaVette on her Grammy-nominated comeback album. The Big To Do simply continues and refines the winning streak of previous efforts and will, again, be loved by the lucky few.
What the others say
"Never have Patterson Hood's five-piece sounded quite so cranky and furiously righteous as they do on this terrific, ear-splitting sprawl of s**t-kicking country boogie." - NME
"Same old story, to some extent, but one worth hearing again." - Guardian
So is it any good?
An impassioned look at the hardships facing everyday people just trying to survive in their beloved Deep South, The Big To Do is unflinching but never depressing, sympathetic but never patronising. The subject matter ranges from alcoholism to broken homes, cheating husbands and disillusionment with the worker's lot. But the first-person narratives ring universally true and are never self-pitying.
Throughout, the band plays with the gusto and surefootedness of seasoned pros - equal parts Skynyrd and Crazy Horse but with the edge of My Morning Jacket's best. This F***ng Job rocks with the anger and frustration of Steve Earle or Springsteen at their most caustic. Shonna Tucker's broken hearted contributions aso add bittersweet muiscal relief to offset the blue-collar country rock. Mike Cooley rounds things out with the fragile country acoustica of Eyes Like Glue.
Drive-By Truckers have refined their short stories in song to near perfection on this release - The Wig He Made Her Wear for example, a treatise on the moral confusion of small town law, plays like a modern update of In Cold Blood or To Kill A Mockingbird. Get Downtown meanwhile is just bar-room boogie of the highest order - all about being unemployed.
The Hold Steady aside, it is hard to think of another modern American band capable of, or even willing to try, the insightful narratives, or the straight-up unapologetic rock thrills that Drive-By Truckers deliver here.
8/10
Steve Braund