Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation's Dark on CD

Description

Drive-By Truckers' sound ticks all the boxes for Southern Rock - pedal steel guitar, close-knit vocals, the odd reference to grandpappy's shotgun- and pays a whole backlog of dues without ever sounding derivative. Their musicianship on Brighter Than Creation's Dark is impeccable throughout - they've been together eleven years - and their best tunes concentrate on secreting lyrics of quiet desperation and twisted reality into a slickly produced, conventional country-rock format. Now and then, their lyrics stray a little close to the edge of self-parody, and this kind of music relies 100% on solid redneck sincerity to keep it on the road, but most songs make it through without exciting more than a wry grin. Daddy Needs A Drink is surely a contender for song title of the year, and is among the album's many polished stylistic gems, but That Man I Shot beats it hands down both lyrically and emotionally. Veering surprisingly close towards Neil Young, and swigging deep from Nirvana's bottle of strong liquor, this is a hellhound-on-my-trail, staggering masterpiece of remorse and fear of retribution. Drive-By Truckers know their chops when it comes to country but it's when they kick into a fuzz-tone stomp that they're at their most comfortable and most impressive. They serve up an Allman Bros. groove with a side order of Lynyrd Skynrd, and show they can genuinely separate the cornpone from the rock when they want to. After repeated plays, it's You And Your Crystal Meth - their stunning exercise in sub Mason-Dixon Line psychedelia - that sticks in the mind. The only track here that's genuinely begging to be played over again, this is without doubt the most inventive and challenging track of the nineteen on the album. --Al Spicer Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window Product Description Brighter Than Creation's Dark is a Southern gothic rock n' roll masterpiece with 19 songs adding up to over 75 minutes of pure rock n roll. The band continues its notorious 3-guitar attack with the promotion of longtime sidekick John Neff to full member. Patterson Hood contributes 9 songs to the album (The Righteous Path, Daddy Needs A Drink), 7 songs from Mike Cooley (A Ghost To Most, Lisa's Birthday) and 3 songs from Shonna Tucker (The Purgatory Line). This it the first time Shonna has written the songs for a DBT album. All this is enhanced with musical contributions from he legendary Spooner Oldham. As Patterson Hood says about the songs on the album, Stylistically, they run the gamut from old-timey sounding country to a heavy R&B influence. Some songs that are quieter than any we've ever recorded and some that rock harder than anything we've ever done. In the end it's still all Rock and Roll (which is why that will always be the description of choice to us when describing our music in stylistic terms). Drive-By Truckers are one of the most unique recording artists and live bands in popular music today. The Truckers write about people, places and situations like no one else, and have build an amazing worldwide audience in the process.