Aural Fixations

THE DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
Decoration Day
(New West)
The band probably didn't think of it this way during recording, but Decoration Day is an important record for the Drive-By Truckers. The Athens, Georgia quintet has been riding a deserved wave of acclaim for its previous album, the double-disk Southern Rock Opera; while it was the group's fourth album, it was for many folks their first exposure to the DBT's vision of literate, high-octane roots rock. Not since the heyday of the mid-90s alternative country scare has there been a band as adept at matching the sensitivity of the best country and singer/songwriter music with the crunching power of rock and the reckless abandon of punk. (Well, maybe Slobberbone.) But SRO, unbeknownst to much of the Truckers' newfound audience, was a bit of a departure for the band, not only because of its narrative, conceptual nature, but also because it was the first album on which the group eschewed much of its country and folk side to concentrate on the bonecrushing Southern rock that was the best vehicle to tell the story. It's a frequent catch-22 for the artist: the work that gets the most attention is the one least typical.

Apparently this fact came as a surprise to the band's label as well. Though originally self-released, SRO was picked up by the Universal-affiliated Lost Highway (home of Lucinda Williams, Ryan Adams, etc.) and given the ultra-wide release it deserved. When the DBT turned in Decoration Day, however, the label balked, expecting but not receiving Southern Rock Opera II. (Why an allegedly artist-friendly label would not bother to research its own signing and know that SRO was an exception in the band's catalog is a mystery.) Unable to come to terms, the Truckers asked to be released from their contract, taking Decoration Day with them. New West was the lucky recipient of the album and here we are.

After one listen to Decoration Day, one has to wonder what the hell Lost Highway was thinking. The band has reincorporated the C&W they'd temporarily put aside for Southern Rock Opera, adding subtle nuances to its guitar-rocking core, and penning a batch of stunning, heart-wrenching songs in the process. While there's no narrative thread running through the 15 tracks, there is a theme: loss. Many of the tunes were inspired by the toll the group's withering tour schedule took on the members' private lives; the air on the record is so thick with tales of divorce, depression and even death that it threatens to match Richard and Linda Thompson's great Shoot Out the Lights for sheer bad vibes.

The opening cut "The Deeper In" sets the tone. A slow, sad waltz, the song tells the story of the only two people presently in prison for consensual sibling incest. Whether you tolerate such a deed or not, it's hard to resist lines like "Last night you had a dream about a Lord so forgiving/He might show compassion for a heathen he damned/You awoke in a jail cell alone and so lonely/Seven years in Michigan," especially when they're delivered in leader Patterson Hood's soulful rasp. Things don't get much rosier in the next song, the country rocking "Sink Hole," as a fifth-generation farmer tries and fails to keep his farm from foreclosure. The dark clouds summoned and the demons invoked, Hood then gets more personal. The boulder-crunching "Hell No, I Ain't Happy" wonders if a life on the road is worth it, artistic fulfillment or no. "My Sweet Annette" turns down the volume to a folk rock lilt, but examines the heartbreak of a bride being left at the altar—from the groom's point of view. "Heathens," "Sounds Better in the Song" and "(Something's Got to) Give Pretty Soon" form an almost hellish trilogy of bitterness and resentment, as the pressures of distance and travel take their inevitable toll on a relationship. It all leads up to "Your Daddy Hates Me," a painful dirge that finds the protagonist trying to deal with his ex in the face of her parents' disapproval. The aftermath of divorce affects more than just the couple involved.

While Hood works through his pain in songs both personal and narrative, his fellow Truckers move in slightly different directions. Guitarist Mike Cooley sardonically implores his sweetheart to "Marry Me," rocking lines like "I'd rather be your fool nowhere than go somewhere and be no one's" the way you wish the Eagles would have. He also examines the way a difficult marriage works—and it does work—in the acoustic ballad "Loaded Gun in the Closet." New recruit (replacing guitarist Rob Malone at the beginning of the Southern Rock Opera tour and making his recorded DBT debut here) Jason Isbell pays tribute to fatherly advice in the contemplative "Outfit" and explains in the title track how, in a family feud, nobody wins. Neither songwriter is particularly upbeat in these tunes, but neither are they quite as clouded in their outlooks as Hood. (more)

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