In a mostly quite positive review, they justly highlight Mike Cooley's contributions:
I coudn't agree more--I love Patterson Hood, but DBT would be a far lesser band without Cooley's song-writing or guitar playing, both of which are incise, trenchant and witty. Plus he wrote possibly the greatest song about adolescent love of all time, "Zip City."
So far I'm really liking "Brighter Than" though it is very long, and a lot of songs seem to be mid-tempo with slide guitar accents--definitely less of the arena-rock--isms of the "Southern Rock Opera"/Jason Isbell era. I took the liberty of dividing up the album into two halves in iTunes so that when I listen to albums on shuffle it isn't quite so over-whelming.
The more conventional, traditional Cooley may not win as many critical plaudits as the idiosyncratic Hood, but he's outclassed his comrade over the group's last two, uneven records, contributing gems like "Where the Devil Don't Stay" and "Space City" while Hood was busy handing out self-help bromides. A tougher, smarter, funnier version of the prototypical alt-country gunslinger, Cooley's in rare wise-cracking form this time around, unspooling quick-witted, sin-soaked vignettes of colorful loners and losers that hearken back to DBT's pre-Southern Rock Opera incarnation as supreme underground redneck jokesters.Drive-By Truckers: Brighter Than Creation's Dark: Pitchfork Record Review
I coudn't agree more--I love Patterson Hood, but DBT would be a far lesser band without Cooley's song-writing or guitar playing, both of which are incise, trenchant and witty. Plus he wrote possibly the greatest song about adolescent love of all time, "Zip City."
So far I'm really liking "Brighter Than" though it is very long, and a lot of songs seem to be mid-tempo with slide guitar accents--definitely less of the arena-rock--isms of the "Southern Rock Opera"/Jason Isbell era. I took the liberty of dividing up the album into two halves in iTunes so that when I listen to albums on shuffle it isn't quite so over-whelming.
Welcome to the comment form module.
Post a comment