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Album Details

• Artist: Drive-By Truckers
• Album: The Dirty South
• Label: New West
• Year of Release: 2004
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: challey on 2004-11-22

Imagine driving down a deserted country road on a cool Autumn night with the windows down, speeding around every curve and absorbing the sights of abandoned farms and broken-down houses. That vision is the kind of scene that each song on The Drive By Truckers' newest album, The Dirty South, vividly portrays and builds on as the stories unfold.

Upon first listen, none of the tracks on The Dirty South stand out in the way that tracks off Southern Rock Opera or Decoration Day do. For some reason, they all sounded like really bland, unoriginal ballads. In fact, it is true that none of the songs on The Dirty South rock as hard as most of their songs written in the past, but the quality of the songwriting is much higher. And that's saying a lot about this band.

While much of Decoration Day consisted of fictional narratives about the darker side of human nature, The Dirty South returns to Southern Rock Opera's style of storytelling about real people. "Danko/Manuel," a solemn tribute to the bassist and pianist of The Band, is a beautiful country-folk song that happens to be the highlight of the album. Sheriff Buford T. Pusser is written about in two songs, "The Buford Stick" and "The Boys from Alabama," while Ronald Reagan is attacked in the anger-fueled "Puttin' People on the Moon." It seems that the Truckers thrive on this almost Dylan-styled realistic writing, and it suits the mood of their music perfectly.

Guitarist Jason Isbell contributes many of the best songs on the album. Besides the afore-mentioned "Danko/Manuel," Isbell adds "The Day John Henry Died," the closest the album ever comes to a rock anthem, and most importantly, "Goddamn Lonely Love," the heart wrenching closer which brings the album to a perfect end. While the comparisons to Lynyrd Skynard are inevitable, the Drive-By Truckers make better music than Skynard was ever able to. Almost unbelievably, The Dirty South is a huge step forward from their last two excellent albums, and is one of the strongest and most consistent recordings of the decade thus far.

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