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Truckers still deliver

By Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 22, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Gangstabilly cow punks Drive-By Truckers continue to produce fine, heartfelt albums.

Photo by New West Records

Gangstabilly cow punks Drive-By Truckers continue to produce fine, heartfelt albums.

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Fans were worried that Drive-By Truckers could lose their edge when they lost singer- songwriter Jason Isbell. Nonsense - Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley were the core of the band long before the gifted Isbell joined.

Brighter Than Creation's Dark, in stores today, carries on the band's output of fine, heartfelt albums. The opening song, the heartbroken Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife, appears to be Hood's attempt to deal with the horrific 2006 murder of musician Bryan Harvey and his family in Richmond, Va., with the lyrics trying to make sense of the senseless.

Maintaining one's humanity against all odds is a theme that pops up throughout the album. Hood's The Righteous Path is a plaintive, determined anthem about staying strong and true against economic and societal downturns: "We've got messed-up minds for these messed-up times."

Frailties and failures also take front and center, be it Daddy Needs a Drink or You and Your Crystal Meth, a bleak two- minute indictment of a friend gone to the dark side through drug use: "Hope your kids don't see you throwing up / hope they ain't there if the house blows up / hope you ain't murdered in your sleep."

But mostly Brighter is full of elegant, moving alt-country songs such as the two ending tracks, Cooley's A Ghost to Most and Hood's languid, gorgeous Monument Valley, another nod to staying true, with "The men and women that can persevere / rage through the storm no matter how severe."

In the end, Brighter Than Creation's Dark is a few songs longer than it needed to be - thank goodness they didn't have to fit in Isbell's tunes after all - but too much of a good thing isn't always a bad thing.

Drive-By Truckers

Brighter Than Creation's Dark

New West Records

Grade: A-