Drive-By Truckers
Brighter Than Creation’s Dark (New West)The Drive-By Truckers create albums that sprawl, epics not consumed one song at a time but full listening experiences that arc like a premium-cable-channel series. At 19 songs and more than 75 minutes, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark just barely slouches to excess, mainly because it finds the Athens, Ga., quartet at its most tuneful. The upheaval associated with losing guitarist/singer-songwriter Jason Isbell in 2007 has served them well. Bassist Shonna Tucker (Isbell’s ex) makes her debut with three songs, one of which, “The Purgatory Line,” shimmers and aches in all the right spaces. Mike Cooley contributes patented Stones rip “3 Dimes Down” and closes up the honky-tonks on “Lisa’s Birthday.” Of the nine tunes written by frontman Patterson Hood, the ragged glory of “That Man I Shot” and “Daddy Needs a Drink,” a meditation on some kind of domestic bliss, amply display his deft range. Trimming a couple of throwaways, like the silly “Bob,” wouldn’t have hurt, and the Skynyrd factor the Truckers are known for is kept to a bare minimum. Yet as always the attitude is: Fuck it, this is where we are. Let it sprawl. Let it rock.
This article appears in January 25 • 2008.