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Brighter Than Creations Dark

Drive-By Truckers

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iTunes Review

Hailed by fans as a return to the true grit of their form, Brighter Than Creation's Dark boasts some of Drive-By Truckers' best songwriting to date. This was not expected, partly because guitar player and co-songwriter Jason Isbell quit the band in the spring of 2007. New full-time member Jon Neff rounds out the sound with his own tone, his pedal steel helping to unravel a gripping ghost story on "Two Daughters And A Beautiful Wife," the album's opener. "The Righteous Path" is a fist-pumping country rocker that unapologetically leans hard on a heavily distorted Crazy Horse crunch, sounding like the bastard child of Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World." But the urgency behind Patterson Hood's voice and the story of a regular American guy trying to hold together the pieces of a crumbling patriotic ideal make this one an apt sequel to Young's 1989 anthem. "The Purgatory Line" is a haunting, slowing pulse of a song where bass player Shona Tucker coos like a heartbroken and heavy-lidded Neko Case.

Customer Reviews

Settling into a groove

On their last outing, A Blessing and a Curse, the Truckers felt like they'd lost their way. On this release, it seems like they've found themselves again. Not as the band you remember ripping it up and leaving the edges ragged back on Opera and Decoration Day, but as a more mature southern and country rock act with tons of soul. This one's mellower than anything they've done, but the gritty stories are still there. A few Stones-esque rockers also tear up the joint, but mostly this is a laid back affair with strong traditional country and honky tonk nods. Shonna's vocal debut (not counting their version of Like a Rolling Stone) heralds a new era and facet of our beloved band. While the departed Jason Isbell is missed here, Shonna nearly makes up the difference with her smoky Saturday night juke dive vocals. This album isn't as strong as Decoration Day or SRO because of a few missteps (to be expected with 19 tracks), but Brighter Than Creation's Dark may find itself one of my top 3 DBT albums when all is said and done. Best cuts: 3 Dimes Down, The Righteous Path, Homefield Advantage, The Purgatory Line, A Ghost to Most. 4.5 Stars.

Keith Richards would be proud

Keith Richards hasn't done much of noteworthy status these past two-maybe-three decades...but he did create an archetype that will live on forever. In my lifetime the closest reincarnation and reinterpretation of the sway and swagger is Mike Cooley. He shines brightly on this collection of songs. Taking nothing away from Patterson...who tempers his urge towards pontification as nicely as he has ever done before...Cooley steals the show. As a long-time fan of the Star Room Boys, another Athens-GA wonder-band, I knew the addition of Johnny Neff would elevate the soundscape of the DBTs to new heights. I can't help but be a fan of this band, the town they represent, and their collective desire to both rock and to smolder without succumbing to cliche. As an Engish teacher living in the deep South, I appreciate a band like this because they nourish the literate-minded soul who also enjoys the road-weary rollicking personae.

How human am I?

It's easy to get swept away by the brilliance of Radiohead, Madvillan, Wilco, the White Stripes - but by comparison to DBT, that music, those stories all have quotes around them. In the parlance of Gertrude Stein, they are the thing about the thing, not the thing. DBT sometimes achieve the thing and when they do you just gotta face up to the question - how human am I? How "here" am I? Songs like Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife are more akin to oxygen than art. It's like reading Sylvia Plath and drinking wine. You get the harshest insights imaginable paired with the narcotics of their amazing arrangements and melodies.

Biography

Formed: 1996 in Athens, GA

Genre: Rock

Years Active: '90s, '00s, '10s

Boasting a mix of Southern pride, erudite lyrics, and a muscled three-guitar attack, Drive-By Truckers became one of the most well-respected alternative country-rock acts of the 2000s. Led by frontman Patterson Hood and featuring a rotating cast of Georgia and Alabama natives, the band celebrated the South while refusing to paint over its spotty past. History, folklore, politics, and character studies all shared equal space in the Truckers catalog, which offered up its first blast of gutsy, twangy...
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