DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS - Brighter Than Creation's Dark

By Simon Howell - The Listening Ear - 01/22/2008

After losing singer-songwriter Jason Isbell as a contributing member, many would reasonably have expected Alabama's venerable Drive-By Truckers to take a break, especially given the somewhat muted reception to 2006's A Blessing And A Curse. Instead, the band hunkered down to craft their strongest set of songs since their 2003 high-water mark, Decoration Day. The keys to their success here are a renewed focus on their strengths as storytellers, as well as bassist (and Isbell's ex-wife) Shonna Tucker's emergence as a strong songwriter in her own right.

One would scarcely have expected that the Truckers could pull off a nineteen-track, seventy-five-minute album after their last album began to strain before its scant eleven tracks were up. Nevertheless, Brighter manages to impress throughout much of its running length -- even if it probably should end with track fifteen, "Check-Out Time In Vegas." The four songs that follow sound like bonus tracks in comparison. Before the album hits that dry spell, however, many of their best cuts to date crop up -- Tucker's gorgeous weepers "I'm Sorry Huston" and "The Purgatory Line," as well as Patterson Hood's "The Righteous Path" and the quietly expansive "Opening Act." Mike Cooley's contributions lean strongly on the folk-country axis of their sound, especially on "Bob," "Perfect Timing," "Check-Out Time in Vegas," and "Lisa's Birthday" (although he still remembers to bring a kick-ass rocker in the form of "3 Dimes Down").

Besides the sharply written tunes, their lyrics remain as socially incisive as ever. On "Bob," Cooley laments the type of independent, idiosyncratic Southern men he fears are dying out with cultural hegemony: "He likes to drink a beer or two every now and again / he always had more dogs than he ever had friends / Bob ain't light in the loafers / he might kneel but he never bends over." Hood's "The Man I Shot" examines guilt and mortality in the age of Iraq ("that man I shot, he was trying to kill me / sometimes I wonder if I should be there / I hold my little ones until he disappears") while "The Home Front" makes Hood's views on the matter even clearer through its lament of a soldier's doting wife ("there ain't no end to it / no 9/11 or uranium to pin the bullshit on"). Southern America may continue to see its constituents internationally ridiculed, but the Truckers' efforts to portray their everyday struggles continue unabated.

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