Label: New West Records
Release Date: June 17, 2003
Website: www.drivebytruckers.com
Drive-By Truckers
- Decoration Day
Lars Gotrich
WUOG's #1 fan is Richard Worley. You haven't become an official DJ until
Richard has called you. Somehow our 26,000
watts make it all the way to his home in North Carolina, but
can't reach my hometown an hour away. He constantly calls
WUOG to talk and request his favorite bands, but there is
one band that he never tires of: Drive-By Truckers.
While Athens is known for its diverse music scene, DBT is
somewhat of an anomaly. While we have a few southern rock
bands in town, none bring the community together like the
Truckers. Rednecks, frat boys, indie kids, punks, and
hippies (excuse the generalizations) alike find it hard to
deny songs like "Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus)" and "Dead,
Drunk, and Naked." It's especially genius in the latter song
when the band yells, "The South will rise again!" where the
rednecks mean it and the punks sing it in sarcastic
laughter.
After a double concept album like Southern Rock
Opera, I was curious to see where DBT would go. The
story was smart and cohesive, the music stellar, and the
lyrical value way beyond most tear-in-my-beer songs today.
However, Decoration Day proves to be its own rock
masterpiece in ways different than its predecessor.
This loosely-based concept contains stories about suffering, retribution, and
damnation... but mostly damnation. We begin with "The Deeper In," a song inspired
by a magazine article about two people serving time for
incest. Now only Patterson Hood could get away with such a
topic singing, "Last night you had a dream about a Lord so
forgiving/ he might show compassion for a heathen so damned/
You might awake in a jail cell, alone and so lonely/ seven
years in Michigan." Hood's understanding of the Southern
psyche makes every character and very sympathetic to
situations most people can't or don't wish to relate to.
While there are more slower, more reflective this time around, Decoration Day doesn't hesitate to bring on the full three-guitar assault on songs like "Sink Hole" and "Hell No, I Ain't Happy." The former slams down the tweaked mountain beat as the three guitarists somehow keep the melodies and counter-melodies coherent (something the inspiration of Southern Rock Opera, Lynyrd Skynyrd, could seriously deter from). The latter sports one of the band's best sing-along choruses. I remember driving down the highway yelling, "Hell no, I ain't happy," at the top of my lungs. It's quite liberating. And Mike Cooley's "Marry Me" is the closest the Truckers have ever gotten to full-on southern rock and would have fit perfectly on any FM radio station back in the '70s.
The best moments of this album, though, come at the somber, heartbroken tales of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. Hood's "Heathens" lyrically brings everything together. He's given up hope for forgiveness and accepts his damnation: "We were Heathens in their eyes at the time,/ I guess I am just a Heathen still/ and I never have repented from the wrongs that they say I have done/ I done what I feel." Even more heartbreaking is "Sounds Better in the Song," a Cooley penned track about a character realizing he's too worthless to be with anybody. Alone with his guitar and an occasional steel guitar line, the man comes face to face with his own ability to love.
Decoration Day is another phenomenal album from the Truckers that shows stronger songwriting ability, and empathizes with the common southern man.
HEATHENS
posted 08.30.03
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Lars is a viking. He is also the music editor for Tangzine. E-mail him kisses at lars59@uga.edu
2003 White Elephant
Productions