Drive-by Truckers

English Oceans

ATO Records, 2013

If you don’t know and to need them summed up in a soundbite, The Drive-By Truckers sound like The Rolling Stones when they get an itch to play country flavored tunes. This said, they also have their own unique voice and write some of the most memorable songs you’ll be lucky enough hear. These songs just happen to be inhabited with some of the most colorful characters since you last visited William Faulkner and Yonkapontathawa County.

This is the tenth album for this Alabama outfit with almost twenty years under their belt and English Oceans is neatly divided between riled up rockers and ballads. Setting the pace is nervy, up-tempo number, “Shit Shots Count,” where Mike Cooley sings “Pride is what you charge a proud man for half/Shame is what you sell to a whore/Meat’s just meat, and it’s all born dying.” lines he delivers with a matter of fact, detached bemusement. It’s just the way it is, ya know?

With “Pauline Hawkins,” they have a song about a woman who believes “love is like cancer,” but is able to find comfort in sex sometimes. “When Walter Went Crazy” unspools at an achingly slow pace about a man who burns down his own home with his wife inside it. As a listener, your not sure who to feel worse for, those killed inside, or those left alive to deal with the mess.

The Drive-By Truckers address the Gothic American South and it ‘s whiskey soaked psyche. They don’t aim to fix it, or even try to. Just to tell the stories they see before them.