Drive-By Truckers: Go-Go Boots

Drive-By Truckers
Go-Go Boots
Rating: 3.7/5.0
Label: ATO Records

Whether or not Drive-By Truckers will ever manage to surpass 2001's Southern Rock Opera - considered the band's high-water mark, as well as one of alt-country's signature records - remains to be seen, but in almost every release since that double album they've managed to come damn close. Aside from their occasionally clumsy debut, Gangstabilly, Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and a revolving cast of cohorts haven't released a bad album yet; few artists with a comparable volume of output in any genre can make that claim. Age hasn't caused the band to settle into a predictable pattern either; previous album The Big To-Do found the band successfully embracing classic rock, leading to some of the most positive reviews of their career.

Expect this general Truckers love-fest to continue with Go-Go Boots, an album that is, generally, the group's most introspective record to date. It's not a quiet album by any means - and parts of it are reminiscent of To-Do, especially the embers of electric guitar that burn on "Ray's Automatic Weapon" and "Used To Be a Cop" - but it's definitely not a, ahem, Southern rock opera, either. There's a Muscle Shoals-meets-Hoosier-blues feel to several songs, especially in the guitar work of the title song - about as sleazy and sordid a song Hood has written, complete with a cheating, murder-arranging man of God and his go-go boot-wearing mistress - and "The Thanksgiving Filter," a mostly bemused, if somewhat cynical, look at a family's numerous eccentricities ("You wonder why I drink and curse the holidays/ Blessed be my family from 300 miles away," Hood deadpans as the song closes). A large chunk of the album is acoustic-oriented with its instrumentation arranged in clean, straight lines; this approach almost always works, especially in "Assholes" - where Hood's vocal delivery coincidentally sounds a whole lot like Jeff Tweedy - and in "Dancin' Ricky," where Shonna Tucker religiously drops the "g" off words (somethin'/dancin'/countin'/spinnin'/actin') like any self-respecting twangy country singer should. Mike Cooley, sounding as much like a Statler Brother as Don Reid ever did, takes lead vocal on "The Weakest Man" and "Cartoon Gold," two plainspoken, traditional country tunes just begging for a Grand Ole Opry airing circa about 50 years ago.

But it's the murder songs that make Go-Go Boots worth its hour-plus running time. As self-contained narratives, the title song, "The Fireplace Poker" and "Pulaski" are flawless, with each song fleshed out with the kinds of articulate, lyrical details that give these songs believability. The manner in which the band tells these tales is similarly engaging and often quite contrasting. In "The Fireplace Poker," Hood practically gives a step-by-step account of the preacher's murder plot, whereas in "Go-Go Boots" he leaves the story to the reader's imagination and clams up like one of his villains might, saying only that, "it took only a little bit of cash and the deed was done." Cooley gives even fewer details in "Pulaski," whose final, and most lasting, image is that of a funeral procession for, presumably, the dead local girl for whom California once "seemed like heaven."

A few down moments on the album prevent it from being a Truckers masterpiece; Tucker's vocals are too bombastic for the tender balladry of the Eddie Hinton song "Where's Eddie," and the album ends with a dull, timid whimper via "Mercy Buckets." But its strengths more than make up for these rare weaknesses, and though Go-Go Boots isn't perfect, like almost every album the band has released since 2001, it's loaded with good stuff and doesn't get consumed by the broad shadow that Southern Rock Opera casts.

Drive-By Truckers: The Fine Print (A Collection of Oddities and Rarities 2003-2008)

A vault-clearing project is, by definition, at a disadvantage before its content even reaches a listener's ears. Usually consisting of sundry and substandard outtakes best suited for the guillotine, drunken "interpretations" of other artists' work and other abominations, such releases tend to offer little more than an artist or band turning their unwanted children loose, quite literally, at the listener's expense. Of course there will always be notable exceptions - the first Bob Dylan Bootleg Series, the more-recent Tom Waits Orphans set - but too often these releases simply remind listeners why such songs were originally relegated to the dustbin of a band's history.

Drive-By Truckers mostly manages to avoid this stigma throughout The Fine Print (A Collection of Oddities and Rarities 2003-2008). Featuring select recordings from the band's post-Southern Rock Opera period, with a slight emphasis on the Dirty South era, the album is consistently strong and cohesive, often sounding more like a proper studio album than a collection of discarded refuse. Perhaps this is to be expected, as the band spent time in the studio pounding the songs into shape, instead of leaving them in various states of undress and foisting the scraps onto the public. Likely to appeal to both those familiar with the group as well as fans who stopped listening after Southern Rock Opera or The Dirty South, this release shows the band occasionally wandering outside its comfort zone, showcasing the fine qualities that separate DBT from its less innovative country-rock brethren.

While no artist will likely ever match Dylan for bizarre and inscrutable album omissions - think "Blind Willie McTell" and go from there - one has to wonder why several of the stronger tracks here didn't appear on one of the band's previous releases. Opener "George Jones Talkin' Cell Phone Blues" takes the country music icon's 1999 automobile crash as its starting point and finds the Truckers at their raucous best: Patterson Hood's drawled vocals, a driving rhythm and a few testosterone-laden guitars. It's a road song from a band whose catalog is dotted with them, its images whirling by in a blur. An alternate take of "Goode's Field Road" is likewise muscular and aggressive, actually surpassing the cut included on Brighter Than Creation's Dark. "Uncle Frank," with its perpetually beaten-down hero, whose life ends in suicide, is similarly reworked to devastating effect. The album also suggests that the band is equally adept at interpreting other artists' songs. Looking past its tortuously sincere Southern mythologizing, the rendition of Tom Petty's "Rebels" could actually pass for a DBT original. The Warren Zevon songs "Play It All Night Long" and "Ain't That Pretty At All" are cross-bred with bastardized lyrics but stay true to both songs' manic intensity, paying tribute to the deceased musician, while album-closing "Like a Rolling Stone" doesn't massacre the Dylan classic like countless other versions.

Yet, it's when the volume is turned down where The Fine Print's best moments occur. Sung by Jason Isbell in his best wounded voice and utilizing only sparse instrumentation, "TVA" is a beautifully moving track that traces a family's history against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the economic and cultural changes brought about by the FDR's New Deal. Far bleaker in tone but equally reserved in execution, the band's cover of Tom T. Hall's 1971 soldier's lament "Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)" is impossible not to view in contemporary terms. Though the song and its lyrics won't ever be accused of being subtle, the interpretation here retains a certain poignancy and relevance for modern listeners.

Other songs, like the Santa-slaying sex and murder fantasy of "Mrs. Claus' Kimono," the somewhat tedious "The Great Car Dealer War" and the plodding "When the Well Runs Dry," are curiosity pieces at best and far from essential. Even if Drive-By Truckers' unique blend of Southern hypocrisies and dignity can become repetitive at times - "a bunch of sharecroppers against the world" indeed - The Fine Print is about as good as a compilation album can be. Those looking for the Southern desperation and dignity that have made the band's name will find plenty of that here, but other songs break from these confines and prove that the band, despite its popular image, does not always operate within the boundaries of the South's conflicted past. One wonders what other gems are still safely tucked away inside that vault.

Patterson Hood: Murdering Oscar (and other love songs)

you know it - spectrumculture.com


Patterson Hood's Murdering Oscar (and other love songs) will likely sound familiar to the legions of PBR-swillin', trucker-hat-wearin' Drive-By Trucker fans. Like Hood's work with DBT, its songs are deceptively simple, straightforward and full of rough edges: searing guitars wail and shred, understated strings and piano melodies add some tenderness and heartache to the fray, background harmonies offer texture and Hood sings in his usual scratchy, countrified drawl. Many of the lyrical obsessions of DBT's best work are here as well: kin (er, family), Southern culture and its various "quirks," mortality and aging, booze and no small number of men and women of questionable moral character.

Though Oscar contains a solid collection of songs, it likely won't convince non-believers who have never gotten on board with Hood or who haven't followed DBT since masterpiece Southern Rock Opera, and is best left to those deranged DBT fanatics living among us. In some ways Oscar has the feel of an odds-and-ends closet-clearing project. Essentially a mixture of songs originally penned by Hood in the early 1990s and more-recent songs, many of them were planned for release but were eventually shelved for various reasons. This isn't to say that the songs are glorified outtakes or b-sides; despite the years that separate some of these songs, the album is quite cohesive, both in sound and Hood's alternately humorous and dark lyrics.

Many of the songs trod familiar ground. "Pollyanna" is built around interweaving guitars and piano as it depicts the age-old story of a relationship in shambles, while the droning "Heavy and Hanging" was written in response to Kurt Cobain's suicide. A number of songs deal with domesticity. The old-timey guitar and strings of "Granddaddy" paint a picture of familial contentment; Hood notes that the song was written shortly before his daughter was born. It's not all New Morning bliss though; the wistful nostalgia of "Pride of the Yankees" is offset by a 9/11 reference and Hood's foreboding lament that "the sky is falling," while "Screwtopia" unfolds like a pissed-off satire of home life, its decidedly un-PC narrator clearly not having bought into feminism ("Keep you pregnant all the time.../ Keep you happy and sedated/ Who need to be liberated?"), and embracing the NRA's favorite amendment ("Son here's a loaded gun/ Try not to hurt no one").

Yet there are few "Holy Shit" moments here, no "Days Of Graduation" or "Plastic Flowers On The Highway" to make the listener take notice. It's reliable yeoman's work to be sure, but the album simply meets the listener's expectations and rarely exceeds them. There are also a few clunkers that are curiosity pieces at best; "She's a Little Randy" sports a few cringe-worthy lyrics, while "Walking Around Sense" sounds uncomfortably similar to early Uncle Tupelo-era Jeff Tweedy. As a document that traces Hood's development as a musician and songwriter, DBT fans most in need of psychiatric treatment and a heavy chaser of pills could spend countless hours analyzing these songs and how they tie in to Hood's previous work. Hood seems to realize this, as his detailed liner notes provide fans with a map, compass and a bit of spare change to help them along. Casual DBT fans - if such a thing even exists - will still find enough to like about Oscar, but it's not required listening by any means.