Drive-By Truckers

4 stars out of 5

Swigging Jack and grinning like demons, the Drive By Truckers have done it again: another brilliant album, with a coupla changeups in the mixture too. Now don't set down the Schlitz and point your finger at me: This is not hyperbole. Although they no longer spit out half-masticated joke tunes like "The President's Penis is Missing" and "Zoloft," their new style rocks harder and really crawls up deep inside you.

The Dirty South, much as the title suggests, is an album revolving around broken spirits, squalid heroism, and dead giants. My favorite tune is "Puttin' People on the Moon," in which a drug dealer has to take on a crap job at Wal-Mart after his wife dies of cancer; Patterson Hood sings bravely at the top of his range, and ejects real venom when he calls politicians "lying sacks of shit." But dig Jason Isbell's eerie "Danko/Manuel," a tribute to late members of The Band, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel, which magnifies the silent spaces between verses and ends up sounding like the sort of underground-folk thing Gillian Welch used to do so well. Or maybe my real favorite tune is Mike Cooley's clutch-grindin', pickup-soakin' opener "Where the Devil Don't Stay," which ends with this astonishing couplet: "The only blood that's any cleaner is the blood that's blue or greener / Without either you get meaner and the blood you gave gives you away."

Three great songwriters and fourteen new songs (well, hardcore fans will quibble over the new version of "Lookout Mountain") add up to the perfect soundtrack for highway driving or whiskey-bottle introspection. Plus you'll learn a little something about Carl Perkins and Buford Pusser. Strongly recommended. - Mark Desrosiers

When you've named your band the Drive-By Truckers and your first three albums are called Pizza Deliverance, Gangstabilly, and Alabama Ass Whuppin', you might have a hard time at first convincing folks that you aren't joking. But the Drive-By Truckers proved that they were most definitely not kidding with 2001's brilliant double-disc Southern Rock Opera, and 2003's Decoration Day actually upped the ante on what might have been a fluke masterpiece with its dark and thoroughly absorbing chronicle of hard times in the American South. With The Dirty South, the DBTs have crafted an equally effective companion piece to Decoration Day that plays on the gangsta rap reference of its title with a set of vividly rendered portraits of life along the margins of respectability below the Mason-Dixon line, from laid-off factory rats dealing drugs to feed their kids to Alabama gangsters determined to shut down the cops who made their daughters cry. From the first low, metallic stomps from Brad Morgan's kick drum on "Where the Devil Don't Stay," it's clear that The Dirty South isn't going to be a good-time party most of the way, and while there are some brilliant anthemic rockers on this album (most notably "The Day John Henry Died," "Carl Perkins' Cadillac," and "Never Gonna Change"), and Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, and Jason Isbell have grown into a force to be reckoned with as both guitarists and songwriters, there's more than a little blood, fear, doubt, shame, and simple human tragedy at the heart of these stories. While much of America might be laughing at "You might be a redneck..." jokes, the Drive-By Truckers aren't about to let anyone forget the harsh truth behind growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in this country, and the tough, muscular force of their music only sharpens the bite of their stories. They can also turn down the amps and still hit you in the heart, especially on "Danko/Manuel" and "Daddy's Cup," and David Barbe's production gives this band the full-bodied clarity they've always deserved. Believe it -- the Drive-By Truckers are the best, smartest, and most soulful hard rock band to emerge in a very long time, and while The Dirty South isn't always good for laughs, it has too many great stories and too much fierce, passionate rock & roll for anyone who cares about such things to dare pass it up. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide