2001's
Southern Rock Opera
catapulted
the Drive-By Truckers
from their early status as another
alt-country
band with a joke name into one of the smartest, edgiest, and most talked-about
hard rock
bands in America, and since then they seem to have taken the thematic consensus of
as a lucky piece -- while 2003's
Decoration Day
and 2004's
The Dirty South
weren't concept albums like
SRO
, their tales of hard living and difficult circumstances in the American South gave them a unified feeling that turned the band's fine songs into an even more cohesive whole. With
A Blessing and a Curse
,
the Truckers
take a step back from this approach for the first time since their breakthrough -- most of the album's 11 songs were written in the studio during the recording sessions -- and though the sound and the feel of these tunes is consistent with the band's previous body of work,
sounds like a collection of individual pieces rather than a coherent and organic whole. But the pieces sound great --
Patterson Hood
Mike Cooley
, and
Jason Isbell
remain a triple-threat team as guitarists, songwriters, and singers, and the tough, funky report of
Brad Morgan
's drums and
Shonna Tucker
's bass drives this music with both groove and force. The hard-earned wisdom about matters of the heart related on
"Space City,"
"A World of Hurt,"
and
"Feb. 14"
cuts deep down to the bone, as does the day-to-day emotional chaos of
"Aftermath U.S.A."
and the title cut.
The Drive-By Truckers
have never sounded better in the studio as they do on
Without polishing away their personality, producer
David Barbe
and mixer
John Agnello
get the band's three-guitar onslaught on tape with equal shares of muscle and clarity, while the tight interplay between the players suggests
the Rolling Stones
at their
Sticky Fingers
/
Exile on Main St.
peak as much as
the DBTs
' oft-cited role models
Lynyrd Skynyrd
.
doesn't try to tell one big story, but 11 small ones that follow a similar trail through 21st century America, and if it isn't as ambitious as the three releases that preceded it, it still confirms that
are still what they were before making this record: the best
band in America today. ~ Mark Deming