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Drive-By Truckers Find Stability, Continue Excellence on The Big To-Do |
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Written by MAX BLAU
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Saturday, 27 March 2010 |
After a decade-plus of rearranging acts, musical chairs and the like, the Drive-By Truckers have finally found some sense of stability during the process of making their ninth album The Big To-Do. Until recently, the well-traveled band, led by co-songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, has been surrounded by an ever-constant rotation of DBT members since the band’s inception. Over the past few years, their new found stability has reflected onto their own work, providing an outlet for the band to create their most predictability solid record in recent memory.
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Drive-By Truckers | 
"The Big To-Do"
(ATO)
Released March 16, 2010
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Patterson Hood described The Big To-Do as "very much a rock album. Very melodic and more rocking than anything since disc 2 of Southern Rock Opera." And although his comparison falls somewhat short, The Big To-Do’s legacy is not fall off from Hood’s description. From the opening moments of the album, “Daddy Learned to Fly” opens the record in classic Drive-By Truckers fashion, as their multi-guitar alt-country thrashing backs the ever-weary vocals of Hood’s travels. But even Hood appears to have come to some sort of resolution—a new thing for the band’s co-leader as he appears to find comfort in singing with the determined conviction found in “This Fucking Job.”
It’s not just Patterson Hood, however, that seems to benefit from the much awaited stability with the group. The other side of the DBT’s foundation, singer/guitarist Mike Cooley, finds himself at his best in years with the quintessential storytelling of “Birthday Boy” and double-times blues of “Get Downtown.” Further, Bassist Shona Tucker continues to make her presence continually known as her beautiful twang carries the lead vocals on “You Got Another” and “(It’s Gonna Be)/I Told You So.”
Beyond the explorations and reinventions of the band’s individual members, The Big To-Do prevails as cohesive and skillful in its own right. Between tracks like the dark brooding reflection on “The Fourth Night of My Drinking,” the warm country timbre within “Santa Fe” or the crawling beauty of “The Flying Wallendas,” The Drive-By Truckers have found the perfect space for artistic creation somewhere in the middle between a sense of instability and complacency. Despite the fact that the band has found themselves between those two extremes for most of their career, their new found happy medium has placed the band in a perfect space. The Big To-Do may not be their best or most complete work, but the album endures as a consistent endeavor within an expected tradition, one that listeners will thoroughly enjoy. Powered by AkoComment 2.0! |
