Drive By Truckers are a band of many talents; the band’s ability to bring characters into poly-dimensional relief through a marriage of southern rock sensibility and sparkling lyrics is perhaps their finest quality. The average band write, record and release music; Drive By Truckers construct a sonic and literary landscape as rich and provocative as a Mark Twain journey down the Mississippi.
Go-Go Boots is the Drive By Truckers’ ninth studio album, and the follow-up to last year’s The Big To-Do. As a piece of recorded music, it’s as elegant as its eight predecessors. There’s pristine southern pop sensibility (I Do Believe, Cartoon Gold, Assholes, The Weakest Man), heavy barroom-rock (Go-Go Boots, Ray’s Automatic Weapon, Mercy Buckets) and soft-focus heavy rock (The Thanksgiving Filter).
But it’s in their story-telling guise that the Drive By Truckers come to the fore. In their astute gaze, every character has something to say, and it’s not always a story that the average listener wants to hear. On Used To Be A Cop, we’re confronted with Patterson Hood’s story of the cop straying from the thin blue line, a tragic narrative that draws in Dylan, Muscle Shoals and The Allman Brothers. Mike Cooley’s Ray’s Automatic Weapon is dark and arresting, with the protagonist’s morality being the subject of conflicting observations. Hood’s Assholes is equally morally contentious; The Weakest Man, with its celebration of emotional antipathy is no less ambivalent.
On The Thanksgiving Filter, Drive By Truckers expose the facade of seasonal happiness that descends upon America in early November, but which disguises familial dysfunctional; Mercy Buckets is a plea for understanding in the face of a rising tide of human imperfection.
There’s something infinitely impressive in any Drive By Truckers product; Go-Go Boots is no exception. Drive By Truckers remain the songwriting laureate for the American south.
By Colin Milburn
