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Drive-By Truckers: Live from Austin, TX

November 4th, 2009 | No Comments

Maybe the liner notes are an apology: “It’s the songs,” says Austin City Limits producer Terry Lickona; and yes, the songs are great, but pop in the CD of the Drive-By Truckers‘ audio/visual combo Live from Austin, TX (New West), and you can’t help but wonder if “their kick-ass rock and roll sound” got left on the bus with the ubiquitous bottle of Jack Daniels.

Patterson Hood has on his nice corduroy jacket, and the set starts off with three relatively subdued numbers for the raucous sextet. Not until “Puttin’ People on the Moon” does the Truckers’ signature Alabama ass-whoopin’ commence in earnest, and with setlists that usually include at least a few ear-bleeders, the CD’s brightest spot is Hood’s narrative before “18 Wheels of Love.” Maybe along with Lickona’s disclaimer should have come directions for use: “Insert DVD first.”

Even before the first notes, it’s obvious that this is a huge honor for the band, and one can understand a degree of reverence for the moment. On the second track, “Heathens,” a quiet song with a redneck punk message, Hood stands in his best rock-out pose, trying mightily to squeeze both rock and reverence from his acoustic guitar. But despite any shyness the band might feel at the outset, they shake off the jitters by Mike Cooley‘s “Ghost to Most.” Yes, Mr. Lickona, the songs are great, but that’s no reason to bury the rock beneath six feet of Texas mud.

There’s no question that DBT has grown up since Southern Rock Opera blew them onto the pages of virtually every music magazine, and Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, the most recent studio album from which five of Live from Austin, TX‘s thirteen tracks come, was testament to that. John Neff‘s pedal steel and Jay Gonzalez‘s keyboards share the stage with Hood and Cooley’s acoustic guitars on “Perfect Timing” and “Heathens,” much like the album versions “The Righteous Path” gets the rock show started proper, and Cooley rips his guitar up like every 13-year-old headbanger’s dream. Shonna Tucker‘s deep country voice slow dances beautifully with Neff’s pedal steel on “I’m Sorry Houston,” and Cooley’s “Space City” is the perfect reprieve after the righteous anger of “Puttin’ People on the Moon” ferments the crowd into a moonshine-soaked, fist-pumping tirade.

The difference in sound quality between the CD and DVD is most evident on “The Living Bubba,” where the reverb nearly shatters the glass on the TV screen, but the stereo speakers just hum along lazily. “Zip City” is more of the same, muffled and quiet. The rockers don’t really rock, and the quiet ones just snore. The DVD sounds rich and full of ringing guitar strings, chiming organ, rattling drums, and yes, great songs. So, if you’re thinking about buying Live from Austin, TX for your car, take Mr. Lickona’s notes to heart and move along to the next DBT selection in the rack. But, if you like to watch your rock as well as listen, take them as a reminder that yes, beneath Hood’s snarl, Cooley’s cool, and the big rock stomp of Tucker and Morgan, there’s a depth to these songs that’s the real reason you hold this set in your hands. Any band can make your ears bleed, but it’s the ones that make your eyes water that make it to Austin City Limits.

JamBase | TV Land
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Drivin’ n’ Cryin’: The Great American Bubble Factory

October 7th, 2009 | No Comments

By: Brian Gearing

The Southern Gothic is alive and well in five-bedroom McMansions, as well as glued-shut doublewides, and though it’s been a while since Athens, GA vets Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ contributed a verse to the great Dixie mythology, The Great American Bubble Factory puts them right back where they were 15 years ago. In the heart of every suburban Southerner lives a lonely teenager with fifteen bucks and a suitcase standing on an empty dirt road, and Drivin’ n’ Cryin’s eighth release sings his song as loud and proud as anything they’ve ever released.

If they’re a little rusty since their 1997 self-titled release, “Detroit Rock City” shakes off the cobwebs and reveals a band more cocksure and earnestly young-at-heart than ever, finding salvation from their lonely roadside desperation in the Stooges and the MC5. “Pick up a guitar. It’s the American way,” wails Kevn Kinney on “I Stand Tall,” an homage to the rock and roll dreams that sustain us through the misery of the landlocked adolescence of “Midwestern Blues,” which showcases the band’s Byrds-y southern pop sound. “Don’t You Know That I Know That You Know” and “Let Me Down” also extend the sound of Kinney’s ten-year East Village songwriter hiatus, but aside from “Preapproved, Predenied,” which turns a kitschy phrase into a clever folk tune, they flip folk on its head and save it for the electric guitars.

Much like Sun-Tangled Angel Revival, Kinney’s most recent solo album, Bubble Factory surveys American life, and on the title track, over soaring guitars and punchy horns, asks as common-sensically as Godfather Guthrie might have, “If you can make it here, why don’t you make it here?” The answer is all too clear, and the sweet nostalgia of “I See Georgia” (which could easily reference several DnC’s “classics”) is tempered by the bitter realization that those Great American Factories may never open again. Ten years later, Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ finds the only thing left to do is rock, and with scorchers like “Get Around Kid” and “Trainwreck,” prove that that may be the one job left that corporate America can’t send overseas.

JamBase | Homegrown
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Ilad:Here/There

September 17th, 2009 | No Comments

By: Brian Gearing

Like its title, ILAD‘s Here/There is the musical equivalent of a stem cell: On their third album, the Richmond, VA foursome seem capable of becoming several things. At times, the potential is as compelling as what is already apparent, but for the moment, ILAD simply are what they are, and evolution is more fun than stagnation anyway.

“Black Gold” is mountain blues that pushes and pulls like a jamband oldie but goodie, but it pounds and shreds rather than noodles and vamps. “Mexico” foregoes cliches of dusty Tijuana tequila bottles and rice and beans hangovers for trippy gringo shamanism, and despite the skipping guitar groove of “Conservation,” IlAD are more psychedelic college radio than sophomore sorority hippie. “Magazine” is offbeat avant-jazz, and the best of the album takes it all in on the haunting “Everyone Hurts Everyone” and the ’70s FM radio ethereality of “Extraordinary Machine.”

“Lou Dobbs,” the album’s single glaring blot, dribbles overly earnest anti-war truisms and bad poetry over a wasted musical call-to-arms. Also, the vocals could be stronger on several tracks, but the spoken/sung lyrics mostly fit well with the thick fog that covers most of the record. The hypnotizing “Wish for a Flood” and “Everybody” weave the multi-rhythmic, melodic threads of Tortoise and Pink Floyd into a yarn that speaks for itself while awaiting its own becoming. Whether Here/There is life or not may be an argument better suited to politics: it is where – and what – it is, and that’s a good record from a band that seems capable of becoming everything it could be.

JamBase | Splitting Cells
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The Dead Weather:Horehound

July 21st, 2009 | No Comments

By: Brian Gearing

The last word from Jack White was that the next album from the White Stripes was still in the works, and that was before The Dead Weather came along. For those who hold Meg’s place on the drum stool as sacrosanct, Jack’s newest project is either pure heresy or the next best thing. Rather than filling Sister White’s place with another luminary to round out his new supergroup, Jack picks up the sticks himself and pounds the skins with a ferocity and proficiency that might send little sis to her room to soak her pillow. Horehound (released July 14 on WEA/Reprise) rocks more raw power than anything he’s done since Elephant and his sexy swagger is back after his turn with The Raconteurs‘ pop-geek boys club.

Maybe it’s something to do with having a woman around. Along with Queens of the Stone Age‘s Dean Fertita and The Raconteurs’ Jack Lawrence, The Kills‘ Alison Mosshart joins White, and he’s gentlemanly enough to share the mic, though their voices are so similar one wonders about the health of his ego. Psychobabble aside, the two compliment each other so well it’s hard to imagine why they would have chosen “Hang You from the Heavens” as the first single. It’s a decent enough introduction, but rather than pound you into submission like the rest of the record, it jerks you around like a rag doll, and though Mosshart’s voice stands on its own, it stands taller on White’s shoulders.

The two come together on “I Cut Like a Buffalo,” which sways around like a dominatrix stripper on 4-pound, 5-inch platforms, and the hip hop stomp of “Treat Me Like Your Mother” knocks the garage door off its chain. Though The Dead Weather’s two main vocalists draw the spotlight at center stage, the other half provides the voltage. Guitarist and keyboardist Fertita hangs around the basement with bassist Lawrence and White’s right foot and only lets the guitars out to screech through a few wailing garage solos.

Aside from “Rocking Horse” and “Bone House,” which fill in the space between, most of the album alternates between the aforementioned heavy blues tracks (including a genius reworking of the obscure Dylan song “New Pony”) and the slow, haunting, deep cut Zeppelinism of opener “60 Feet Tall” and the instrumental “3 Birds.” Not every track is a home run, but Horehound notches another one in the win column for Jack White. And if The Dead Weather can pick the second single better than the first, their debut is likely to win over a few classic rock listeners who shied from The Raconteurs’ pop edge or the White Stripes’ garage slop. That Jack White can continue to produce superior work in such a variety of settings is a testament to his talent and evidence that whatever direction he may choose it will always be forward. Sorry, Meg.

JamBase | Jack’s Beanstalk
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