The Andrew Extravaganza

I touched on the subject briefly in my last entry, the one about all the albums, but the Drive-By Truckers are one hell of a band. Like my fixation on the Silver Jews earlier this year, I just want to devour every bit of music DBT has ever produced. And I want you to want to devour it too.

Southern Rock Opera set the bar impossibly high, so initially there was a bit of disappointment with their latest effort, A Blessing and a Curse, which I picked up at Best Buy as a reward to myself for a hard day of Christmas shopping. Had I been in Austin (read: near a record store worth a damn), I would have given myself a much better reward and bought every album in their catalogue; goddamn, I miss Waterloo records.

Back to A Blessing and a Curse. As I understand it, the album is a departure from previous releases in that most of the songs were written in the studio rather than road tested at live shows. For sure, the production is much slicker than the raw sounding Southern Rock Opera. That's what bothered me at first, the fun factor of listening to a band rock out on ambitious songs and not worrying about being a little sloppy along the way, that's missing for the most part. But a studio album has its merits too, it just takes more listens to appreciate it. Besides, A Blessing and a Curse is three albums removed from Southern Rock Opera, so it's probably a good thing that they don't sound much alike.

Song highlights:
Of the three songwriters/guitarists, Mike Cooley is responsible for the catchiest tunes and the best one-liners. He pens between a fourth and a third of the songs on each album; however, a mix tape of DBT would have to be at least fifty percent Cooley. His first of two songs is the excellent Gravity's Gone.

This is Jason Isbell's third album as a Trucker, but I'll need to listen to Decoration Day and The Dirty South before I can summarize his merits as a songwriter. He offers two songs, both feel a little more generic than most on the album, but they're decent. Easy On Yourself is his rocker and sounds very Blue Oyster Cult, almost to a fault, almost as if it's on purpose, seriously, Bruce Dickinson would think there's too much cowbell involved.

Then you have lead Trucker Patterson Hood. Hood always pens the bulk of the albums and rightfully so because he's the best songwriter. He's capable of writing catchy songs like Cooley, but Hood tends to be more ambitious and willing to take risks rather than sticking to the same narrative voice or song structure. It was a tough choice to pick the highlight, but I'm going with the closing number, A World of Hurt. Hood's voice in the spoken-word verses has just the right amount of confidence to keep it grounded and sincere. A lesser band would fuck it up and come off sounding trite.

At this point, I'm satisfied with my effort to pimp this band.

The songs you chose were not bad. I'm acquiring more Truckers albums to get a bigger sampling. I don't know if they'll make it into my normal rotation, but I certainly don't mind listening to them. (i.e. something I'd enjoy if I heard but not choose myself that often)