The cover says a lot. Flag at half-mast. "American Band" by the Drive by Truckers. Released September 30, 2016. I listened to the record about 6 or 7 times before I looked at the liner notes and the song lyrics. I just love the sound of the record. Lean, tough, powerful, rock & roll, well-recorded, perfectly-composed. A bit "Stonesy" to my ears, the Truckers capture a sort of "Exile on Main Street" vibe. Love those guitars, mainly that classic Fender sound: Telecasters, Jazzmasters; Mike Cooley also plays custom Baxendale Guitars. Two extraordinary songwriters and vocalists: Patterson Hood & Mike Cooley.
Patterson Hood: “Probably 90 percent of everything we’ve recorded has been more or less live in the studio,” Hood says. “On this record, I think it’s almost 100 percent. There’s a couple of songs where I think we even used Cooley’s scratch vocal take. We might go in and redo the vocal or overdub a guitar track or two. We made this record in six days—that’s overdubs and everything..."
And what are they saying? They are conjuring the "fuck-up-ness" of our current American Moment. And it's fucking glorious.
