Admittedly, I have been doing a
lot of random rolling out of my ‘new album’ section only, so maybe it shouldn’t
surprise me that for the second time in three reviews I’ve got another Drive-By
Truckers album. Good thing I like this band a lot.
Let’s get to it!
Disc 934 is….Decoration Day
Artist: Drive-By
Truckers
Year of Release: 2003
What’s up with the Cover? Demonic geese pay dark homage to
the second coming of…someone. This fantastically creepy cover is brought to you
by artist Wes Freed, who does a lot of Drive-By Trucker album art.
How I Came To Know It: I recently got into Jason Isbell,
and when I heard he had previously played for the Drive-By Truckers, I thought
I would check them out. At first I couldn’t find the two albums that Isbell
played on that intrigued me (“Dirty South” and “Decoration Day”) but I finally
found the latter about three weeks ago and here it is. The search for “Dirty
South” continues.
How It Stacks Up: I have five Drive-By Truckers albums at
present. Of those five I’m going to put “Decoration Day” just ahead of “American
Band at #2. However, I still don’t know the other three albums very well, so
that could shift up or down.
Ratings: 4 stars
Thirteen
years before the Drive-By Truckers got political on “American Band” they
were exploring the challenges of America at a more intimate level. “Decoration
Day” is an album that digs deep into the hard-scrabble lives of rough characters
making hard choices and living (and dying) with the consequences.
Musically,
the album is a mix of alternative country and hard southern rock, the latter
occasionally tinged with a bluesy twang that is reminiscent of the Rolling
Stones in places. The country elements are raucous enough and the rock elements
are stripped down enough that they meet halfway and keep the record sounding
cohesive throughout.
And of
course, the record is one of the holy trinity that features Jason Isbell.
Without Isbell the Drive-By Truckers still have a nice balance between the
songwriting (and singing) of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. Isbell also sings,
writes and plays guitar and is every bit the equal of Hood
and Cooley at all of it. The result is an extra dimension to the band’s sound
that I wish were present on all their records.
Isbell’s
contributions as lead singer and writer are limited to two of the 15 tracks,
but they are two of the best. “Outfit”
is a song about small town livin’ and the dreams that get lost along the way. Lines
like:
“Well, I used to go out in a
Mustang, a 302 Mach One in green.
Me and your Mama made you in the
back and I sold it to buy her a ring.”
Would make
Springsteen proud, as Isbell paints a picture of a wild youth who settled down
and had some kids, to whom he gives the following down-home advice:
“Don't call what you’re wearing
an outfit. Don't ever say your car is broke.
Don't worry about losing your
accent, a Southern Man tells better jokes.
Have fun but stay clear of the
needle. Call home on your sister's birthday.
Don't tell them you're bigger
than Jesus, don't give it away.”
Later,
Isbell sings the title track, a dark tale about a true family feud, where the
music’s menacing tone and muddy guitar licks set the perfect stage for revenge
and murder. My only quibble about this song is the almost two minutes of instrumental
clangor that ends it. It made me feel like I had a feud of my own - with the
producer who refused to spin his finger in that tight circle that tells the band
to wrap it up.
A
similar problem exists on the dirge-like “Your
Daddy Hates Me” which needed to end a lot sooner, putting the album north
of an hour and one song over my usual 14 song maximum.
A lot of
the record is absorbed with marriage, and more than a few pregnancies (including
the one alluded to by Isbell in the lyrics above). People get proposed to, they
get left at the altar, while others get together and live to regret it.
Mike
Cooley has two of the best of these with “Sounds
Better in the Song” and “Loaded Gun
in the Closet.” Both tracks feature sublime guitar picking that has a deep
and stark resonance that draws you into the stories of love, loss and worst of all - resignation.
Music so
often encourages you to dream, but “Sounds
Better in the Song” has the most depressing take on dreams I think I’ve
heard in music:
“Dreams are given to you when
you're young enough to dream them
Before they can do you any harm.
They don't start to hurt, until
you try to hold on to them after seeing how they really are.”
Yet for
all that, at least the heartache is resolving itself. On the album's final song, “Loaded Gun in the Closet,” a man comes home each day, rants about
his day and his wife makes him dinner. They go through their daily lives and
while she could leave any time she doesn’t, because as Cooley points out:
“But she's got a loaded gun in
the closet.
And it's there anytime she wants
it.
And her one and only man knows it
and
That's why he put it there in the
first place”
Yeesh! I’m
not even sure what is going on here, but given how many bad choices have already happened on this record by this point, it can't end well.
Fortunately
all the bad choices, violence and despair are turned into musical gold. You don’t
have to live these lives, because “Decoration Day” can give you a world-class tour
and let you then return to the safety of your happy home and stable job.
“Decoration
Day” is about three songs and 12 minutes too long, but apart from that minor
quibble this is an exceptional record, tragic and glorious in equal portion.
Best
tracks: The
Deeper In, Outfit, Sounds Better in the Song, When the Pin Hits the Shell,
Decoration Day, Do It Yourself, Loaded Gun in the Closet
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