Drive by Truckers: Go-Go Boots

Drive by Truckers: Go-Go Boots

2011

ATO Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. I Do Believe  2. Go-Go Boots  3. Dancin’ Ricky  4. Cartoon Gold  5. Ray’s Automatic Weapon  6. Everybody Needs Love  7. Assholes  8. The Weakest Man  9. Used To Be A Cop  10. The Fireplace Poker  11. Where’s Eddie  12. The Thanksgiving Filter  13. Pulaski  14. Mercy Buckets


Eh. Out of all the Drive by Truckers albums I own, this is probably my least favorite one...I mean, it's DBT so it can't be bad, but it feels a bit long and labored to me, despite some fantastic songs...

The album's M.O. becomes apparent immediately on the opening track, "I Do Believe." The song starts out with an acapella Patterson Hood insistently singing, "I do believe, I do believe," and you expect the big rock to roll in any second, but instead it gently unfolds into starry-eyed emo-country...Alright, I got it...This is going to be a gentler, slower DBT album....I can handle that, especially if everything is going to be as good as that opening song...

But it isn't...The title track and "The Fireplace Poker" kinda feel like Murder Ballads number 1000 and 1001, since they both appear to be based on the same murder..."Dancin' Ricky" is easily the worst DBT song I've ever heard...The music is so halting and clunky and the lyrics are terrible! Terrible lyrics? On a Drive by Truckers album?!?! I loved Shonna Tucker's contributions on "The Big To Do," so it's hard to say what went wrong exactly..."Assholes" seems like less a song and more an excuse to air some dirty laundry... After listening to it, I don't think I can bear to hear the word "asshole" even one more time...I'm also not too crazy about "Mercy Buckets" where Patterson sounds like he's trying to convince himself too hard that the song is uplifting, so it comes off kinda strained...

The good news is everything else rules...The two Eddie Hinton covers are incredible and add some much needed soul to the album...Want to hear an uplifting song? "Everybody Needs Love"...Man, I wish they'd do more stuff like this...They should become an Eddie Hinton cover band! "Where's Eddie?" is endlessly fascinating from a songwriting perspective....Basically it's sung from the point of view of a woman running around town trying to find Eddie, voicing her regrets about how she's treated him...That takes some balls...I can't imagine writing a song called, "Where's Jamin"....(answer, he's probably either watching TV or sitting on the can)...

Mike Cooley seems to be best suited to the album's low-key mood and delivers everything in a Johnny Cash boom-chicka-boom-chika country manner which turns out to be a brilliant move. "Pulaski" is one of his greatest and most understated songs...An easy flowing melody and gentle acoustic picking outlining the story of a homesick small-town girl...It's so so vivid you can practically feel the country breeze blowing out of your speakers...They should have just made the song one hour long and filled the whole damn CD with it...I'm calling Mike Cooley and the ghost of Eddie Hinton the album's Most Valuable Players...

 Although, Patterson gets in "The Thanksgiving Filter," which is one of  my favorites...It's one of those rare DBT songs where the music and melody is so good that you don't even care about or notice the lyrics...Just a top-notch example of pop-rock songwriting...

This would probably be a great album by any other band's standards, but I've come to expect a lot from the Drive by Truckers at this point...They've been so supernaturally consistent that a minor entry in their catalog can seem like a big deal...After my initial lukewarm reception of the album, I thought to myself, "Huh. Maybe I'm just burned out on the band"...But then "English Oceans" proved that wasn't the case (but we'll get to that later)...Still, if you're a DBT fan you must own this for the highlights...Not to mention all the neat artwork...

Here's "The Thanksgiving Filter" by Drive by Truckers...Enjoy...