For the Drive-By Truckers, the southern thing is both an identity and an industry.
By mixing deep-fried rock ‘n’ roll with masterful storytelling and redneck apocrypha, the Athens, Ga.-based musicians keep turning out one awesome album after another.
It’s as if the hallowed corpse of William Faulkner wouldn’t stop begetting little children on the equally hallowed, if womb-less corpse of Ronnie van Zant. That’s how prolific and creepy the group can be, and also how brilliant.
On Go-Go Boots, the Truckers’ ninth studio album, the band delves deep into the ethos of the long lost rhythm section.
Though it represents a bit of a departure from its widely recognizable brand in terms of sound, it certainly doesn’t in terms of quality.
Front man Patterson Hood’s father, David Hood, is a member of the legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, so the Truckers’ session heritage is strong.
When the band taps these roots on Go-Go Boots, the results are both groovy and explosive.
“Used To Be A Cop,” for instance, sounds like it was recorded by a rhythm section on crystal meth. It’s got a droning backbeat behind a menacing story of a troubled, divorced ex-cop.
It’s characteristic of Hood’s songwriting pathos that he can make us sympathize with a brutalizer of both wife and citizenry, all by reminding us of his subject’s frustrated ambitions to play college football.
