Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Brighter Than Creation's Dark




DBT's 8th album is officially being released today. Be sure to grab a copy at your local music store and what ever you do DO NOT miss a ROCK SHOW when they swing by your neck of the woods.

Read the incredible lyrics to BTCD on DBT's website.


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Amazon.com: Brighter Than Creation's Dark: Music: Drive-By Truckers:
"Amazon.com Sales Rank: #18 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Popular in these categories:
#1 in Music - Classic Rock - Southern Rock
#9 in Music - Rock
#15 in Music - Pop"
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Brighter Than Creation's Dark - Billboard:
"Drive-By Truckers' seventh album is a sprawling scorcher, and while these guys certainly aren't strangers to long records, 'Brighter Than Creation's Dark' is one of the meanest, leanest 19-track albums you'll ever spin. Yet where DBT usually hits the ground running, 'Dark' is deliberately slower to burn, full of beautifully considered stories of soldiers and fathers and drinkers that call to mind nothing less than 'The River.' A surprisingly prolific Mike Cooley turns in the countried-up 'Bob,' 'A Ghost to Most' and the rocker 'Self-Destructive Zones,' all smooth-going-down shots of squinty-eyed, serrated humor, while Patterson Hood is in never-better form on 'Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife' and 'Monument Valley,' the record's John Ford-quoting closer. 'Dark' also benefits from the expanded roles given pedal-steel maestro John Neff and bassist Shonna Tucker, whose first DBT tracks (including the shimmering 'The Purgatory Line') channel Patty Griffin and whose harmony vocals add welcome, newfound atmosphere. —Jeff Vrabel"
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CD: Drive-By Truckers - Los Angeles Times:

"Drive-By Truckers 'Brighter Than Creation's Dark' (New West) *** 1/2

THE eighth album from this protean band completes one of the widest mood swings in recent rock history. After specializing in thematically cohesive albums and a revitalized brand of Southern rock, the Athens, Ga.-based Truckers are now all over the place.

That figures, given the changes in the group's core makeup. Rock-leaning guitarist Jason Isbell has gone solo, founding guitarist and pedal steel player John Neff is back, soul eminence Spooner Oldham plays piano and organ on the new album (in stores Tuesday), and bassist Shonna Tucker contributes her first songs."
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allmusic ((( Brighter Than Creation's Dark > Overview ))):

"And 'That Man I Shot' is a blazing, troubling masterpiece in which a soldier home from Iraq can't tear away the memory of a man he killed in combat ('That man I shot, I didn't know him/I was just doing my job, maybe so was he'). It's a tale of the most human consequences of war that's built from equal portions of anger, confusion, and compassion, and it's hard to imagine any other band pulling off its fusion of Southern-fried street smarts and guitar-fueled thunder. It's one of several brilliant moments on Brighter Than Creation's Dark, and less than three weeks into 2008 it's hard not to escape the feeling that with this disc we may already have the best album of the year."
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Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation’s Dark - - New York Times

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
“Brighter Than Creation’s Dark” (New West)

Through a half-dozen studio albums since 1998 the Drive-By Truckers have revealed a mission: come up with a song for every kind of person in the modern American South. There are 19 more on their new album, “Brighter Than Creation’s Dark,” including family men, criminals, drunks, workers, addicts, soldiers, even musicians. The music is a wide-ranging idea of Southern rock that draws on not only the amalgams made by bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers, but also on their sources and roots. Over the past decade songs from the Drive-By Truckers have juxtaposed observation and fiction, autobiography and allegory, but not a lot of ego.

The band was founded by the songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. They make the songwriter the lead singer, so the band regularly switches between the high, weary voice of Mr. Hood and the growly drawl of Mr. Cooley. On this album another singer and songwriter steps forward: Shonna Tucker, who has been the band’s bassist since 2003. (Her ex-husband, Jason Isbell, left the Drive-By Truckers and started a solo career last year.) On its way to depicting the entire South, with Ms. Tucker the band now has a gutsy voice representing women too. She works up to muscular roots-rock in “Home Field Advantage.”

Instead of aiming for a particular trademark sound, the Drive-By Truckers have always let the song dictate the style. They can be noisy and turbulent, as in “That Man I Shot,” a soldier’s postbattle reactions set to a feedback-drenched Crazy Horse stomp, or steadfast and long-suffering, as in the album’s other Iraq war song, “The Home Front,” Mr. Hood’s sketch of a soldier’s family.

They can be calm in pedal-steel-topped ballads like “Bob” (“He always had more dogs than he ever had friends”) and “Daddy Needs a Drink.” They can play straightforward country, like “Lisa’s Birthday” (“It’s a good thing her dancing shoes don’t run on gasoline”), or nearly avant-garde rock, like the piano drone of “You and Your Crystal Meth.”

This is a typically crowded Drive-By Truckers album; it doesn’t need all 19 songs. But the overload is part of the point. In this band’s America all kinds of characters show up. JON PARELES

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5 comments:

Jez said...

The internet's a trip. 5 minutes before I check out your blog, I was looking for the lyrics. Even hit the refresh button. Nothing. Link to it from your blog, looks the same. Hit refresh, and whoomp!, there it is!

AAW said...

AAW is the key tot he lyrics, Jez. ;-)

Seriously, they went up last night. Thank JennB for the ton of hard work she's been putting in of late.

I've been listening the record for a while now but after reading the lyrics I'm gaining an entirely new perspective. They could package the lyrics up and sell it as poetry.

Townser said...

Just got the CD and am loving it. Showed much restraint in saving a Best Buy gift card from X-mas to use toward the purchase. I hate patronizing stores like that b/c they have ruined the old independent record store, but I figured buying a DBT album would counteract that to some extent...

Did I see you getting a shout out in the notes? If so, the man-crush is back in place.

AAW said...

IT kicks much ass doesn't it, townser. I've had it for a couple of months now but I rediscovered it all over today as I was driving in between cities.

Humbly I say yes to your 'shout-out- question. Probably one of the coolest things ever for me. I damn near teared up when JennB emailed me and told me last night.

Shit, I should be thanking them daily for all they've done for me.

Townser said...

That is so great for you. Many props. As for the album, Cooley kills it and the comparisons to the Stones' Exile are not over the top. Exile is my 'desert island' album so I do not toss that comparison out there lightly...