A few Drive By Truckers albums now, starting with the third, mammoth record, Southern Rock Opera (2002). This is a truly massive record, and a grandstanding demonstration that a concept album needn't be hidebound by the notion of a narrative. As a southern fried rock album it's second to none, but it's also a kind of inverted postmodernist prank in that it's an album about southern fried rock, ostensibly and obliquely telling the story of a young guy in the 70's digging Skynyrd and dreaming of being in a band. So it's clearly lead Trucker Patterson Hood's own life-story really, except that in this case the fictional band start to emulate the experiences (and ultimate demise) of Skynyrd. It's a deeply-felt tribute to the south and its rock music, and the way in which both have been, as Hood has it, wholly misunderstood by the rest of the US and the rest of the world. As a band the Drive By Truckers have kind of inherited Skynyrd's sound and style anyway, but use it in a very clever, very literate way and make fantastic records as a result. Personally I have never been able to get quite used to the sense that it's a little bit fabricated, but even if it is it hardly matters, the records are great and none more so than Southern Rock Opera. Hood's cracked, deep southern voice plays a large part in the success of their sound and it's in fine form throughout the album. Bearing in mind it's over an hour and a half long it's remarkable that it never loses momentum or interest, and the band were smart to load the second half with big hooks and showy rock-outs.
Many people rate Southern Rock Opera as the band's best work, but personally I think that the follow-up, Decoration Day (2003), is much better. Decoration Day is, I think, a superb rock record, beautifully textured, alternately vicious and delicate, and it's got some of Hood's best songs by far. The breadth of influence is extended significantly on Decoration Day and that must be due to the addition of Jason Isbell as third guitarist, and the overall mood is much more subdued and gentle. In amongst Hood's standard Skynyrd stylings are a number of lovely low-key slow numbers which show a solid country influence which had been previously entirely sublimated by the rocking out. There's a really fabulous four song run early in the album from 'Marry Me' (which sounds like a cross between a new wave band, the Stones and Little Feat) to the absolutely lovely 'My Annette', and 'Outfit' and the really gorgeous 'Heathens'. The narratives in the songs, although clearly outside the real scope of experience of the band, work as convincing short stories and the whole album really is very, very fine indeed.
Fifth album, The Dirty South (2004) returns to the Southern Rock Opera template, it's another double album, very specifically about growing up in Alabama, and it's amps are turned right back up. There's very little of Decoration Day's quieter moments, it's mostly serious rock music, but when things do tone down a bit it's great ('Carl Perkins' Cadillac' is really good for instance). But for the most part The Dirty South is all about the rock, and it delivers in spades. One element that's often overlooked on the Truckers' albums is the contribution of bass-player Shonna Tucker, whose lithe lines really give the songs a sense of structure, underscoring the straight-ahead guitar parts by adding real texture. Anyway, unlike Southern Rock Opera, The Dirty South keeps it relatively short for a double album and doesn't outstay its welcome in any way. It's a slightly more disjointed record, but it still plays well enough as a whole and the songs on an individual level are, as usual, really fine, smart, college-boy versions of southern rock. And it has a wonderful semi-tribute to the Band in 'Danko/Manuel'.
Finally it's 2006's A Blessing and a Curse. The first Truckers album to come in at under an hour, A Blessing and a Curse is a more straightforward rock record all round. It doesn't have an over-arching theme, it doesn't have a storyline or album length structure, it's just some songs. It almost comes as a disappointment to hear what by their standards is a relatively loose collection of songs until you remember that's what most albums are. Most of the tunes on the album are as tight as ever and there are some real winners. Unfortunately there's also a tendency to ape the Rolling Stones just a bit too closely and it's when this temptation proves too hard to resist that the record goes off the rails a bit. It also has an unusually high miss to hit rate, in that there are four or five songs that aren't up to their uncommonly high standard. Nonetheless, even minor DBT songs are pretty decent and although A Blessing and a Curse is an accurate title, it's still a more than decent record. Incidentally, the Drive By Truckers are one of the most spectacularly rock live outifts going, if you get a chance to see them, even if you don't particularly dig the records, it'll be worth it.
One of the most singularly brilliant pieces of post-hardcore appeared in 1994 in the form of Drive Like Jehu's second album Yank Crime. If anybody ever wondered where At the Drive-In stole absolutely everything from, well, this is it. John Reis was dividing his time equally between the schtick of Rocket from the Crypt and the furious, and furiously complex Drive Like Jehu. Yank Crime is made up of nine astoundingly convoluted and unpredictable pieces of livid post-hardcore rock, with time signatures which contort and twist and collapse under the weight of an absolutely relentless grinding guitar assault. Even when things calm down a bit, it's still spectacularly intricate. Rick Froberg's screaming vocals are the very definition of early emo (ragged, obtuse and howling), but they are doing little more than riding over the top of the blistering pre-post-rock (do forgive that absurdity - pre-post-rock! But that's what it is). In any event, this is such a monumental album, it kind of makes everything in the genre that came after redundant. Which I suppose is why emo ended up being such a sappy lily-livered waste of time.
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