This week I discovered a whole
slew of new (to me) artists, including Sarah Jarosz, Aiofe O’Donovan, the Stray
Birds (all folk or country) and rapper P.O.S.
They were all great, but eclipsing
all of them were murder balladeers the Handsome Family. I listened to ten
Handsome Family albums this week and liked every one. I only own one, but that’s
because that is all the record store had in stock.
Speaking of murder ballads, this
next album has more than a few of its own.
Disc 967 is…Go-Go Boots
Year of Release: 2011
What’s up with the Cover? More awesome album art by
long-time Truckers’ collaborator Wes Freed. Here we have the titular Go-Go
boots, looking not so much titillating as creepy and awkward. It gets even
worse when you fold it open, revealing the rest of the scene:
Creepy
alcoholic (note the bottle) reclines in the shadows, presumably getting a
private show in a cheap motel room. What’s that? Not creepy enough? – how about
the corpse river on the inside of the fold:
Never
change, Wes.
How I Came To Know It: Just me drilling through the
Drive-By Truckers back catalogue buying all the albums that agreed with me.
How It Stacks Up: With my recent acquisition of “Dirty South” I now
have all six Drive-By Trucker albums on my list – at least for now. Of those
six, “Go-Go Boots” is pretty solid but I can’t dislodge everything ahead of it,
and I can’t get it ahead of fourth overall.
Ratings: 4 stars
When it
comes to storytelling, there are few better than Mike Cooley and Patterson
Hood, the two musical geniuses behind the Drive-By Truckers. “Go-Go Boots” is
just another tour de force of them telling ordinary stories about ordinary
people and making those tales so compelling you can’t hear them often enough.
I’ve
said lots about these guys over the previous three reviews, so I’ll quickly
note that they are a blend of southern rock and alternative country, who keep
the music simple and well-matched to the stories they tell. Those stories are
simple as well, at least on the surface, but the Drive-By Truckers have a
powerful ability to see into the nooks and crannies of their characters. They understand
how people tick in a way that reminds me of Shakespeare, with similarly tragic
storylines.
This
album features plenty of marital infidelity and a fair bit of murder to go along
with it. Two of the best songs – the title track and “The Fireplace Poker” – feature
both, with a preacher hiring some thugs to murder his wife in both songs. “Go-Go
Boots” has a bluesy feel that evokes sleazeball dancing as the album cover
suggests, and “The Fireplace Poker”
is a slower meander that focuses less on the dancing and more on the murder. As
is ever the case with great storytelling, the specific is terrific. On the
latter song the titular fireplace poker doesn’t make an appearance until the
song is more than half over, but it enters with a bang:
“The Reverend came home from work
and found the Mrs. dying
Life was falling from her grasp
but still she was there trying
No one will ever know what she told
him or know what he told her
Cause the Reverend did his wife
in, fifteen whacks, fireplace poker.”
Later that
poker is the only object in the room with no fingerprints on it. Nice touch.
Elsewhere,
the band covers the issue of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (“Ray’s Automatic Weapon”), breakups
without the murder (“The Weakest Man”)
and the music industry (“Assholes”).
Every one of them makes you feel like you are there, shaking with fear, sadness
or fury as the subject matter demands.
Long-time
readers will know what joy I take poking fun at the Soulless Record Execs of
the music industry, but nothing I’ve ever written holds a candle to the
derision and dismissal these guys deliver to what (I presume) is some old label
or manager on “Assholes”. I don’t
know the details, but the song is great. If I were the Soulless Record Exec
that inspired it I think I’d just shake my head and smile knowing it was
another great song, even if a piece of it was no longer mine. I doubt that was
the reaction, but I like to think it would have been mine.
The
various tragedies on “Go-Go Boots” rarely let you up for air, but the songs
have such a gentle forward motion you don’t mind being rocked to sleep by all
the sadness. A drunken cop bemoans losing his career, and a small-town Tennessee
girl moves to California and loses all hope, but we, the voyeuristic listener,
can’t look away; the songs are just too good.
Third
singer Shonna Tucker throws in a couple of songs from a slightly different
perspective; namely women chasing after their no-good men, and leaving you to wonder
why they bother. I love the mix of sweet girl and biker chick in Tucker’s
voice, which is a nice offset to Hood and Cooley.
The main
downside to “Go-Go Boots” is its length, which at 14 songs and 66 minutes is
just a bit too much of a good thing but this is a minor quibble about a record
that is well worth your time and money.
Best
tracks: Go-Go
Boots, Cartoon Gold, Assholes, The Weakest Man, I Used to be a Cop, The
Fireplace Poker, Pulaski
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