It's story time again for Drive-By Truckers fans.
"Go-Go Boots," the ninth studio album by the seasoned Southern rockers, serves up the band's latest batch of the same honest sounds and plainspoken lyricism that's done them so well for over a decade of alt-country music making.
Co-founders Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood (son of former Muscle Shoals bassist David Hood) have written themselves a healthy 14-track LP, and like any Drive-By Truckers effort, each and every one of them packs a hell of a punch in both form and content.
High points include the fist-pumping road-trip starter "I Do Believe," equipped with an energized symphony of distorted electric guitars and freeing lines that evoke the unrestrained sentiments of Tom Petty, the Hold Steady and Ry Cooder.
The grungy, dark, sexual and tense title track "Go-Go Boots" kills this buzz with a relentless efficiency, as do other tracks with several emotional ups and downs. The quivering tremolo settings and moans of slide guitars perfectly accommodate an unapologetically dismal story of the local adulterer who also happens to be the town preacher and quite the family man.
Other noteworthy moments include the absolutely killer "Used to Be a Cop," one of many first-person narratives on the record. This in particular tells the story of a jumpy ex-cop who can't seem to find any answers.
Killer bass grooves in upper-mid tempo provide the album a nice change of pace for seven minutes and a different kind of instrumental activity Drive-By Truckers fans are not used to hearing (in a good way).
The album also features three covers of the late Southern soul specialist Eddie Hinton, most effectively in the album's most memorable four-and-a-half minutes, the infectiously catchy "Everybody Needs Love." It's a strong testament to a man with great songs and not nearly enough to show for it.
The work is not without a few drawbacks, found largely in tracks featuring Cooley at lead vocal. While nestled into his characteristic secondary vocal role to Hood, Cooley's patented straightforward lyricism lacks the melodic strengths of the other songs featured on "Go-Go Boots," except his final appearance in "Pulaski."
"Go-Go Boots" proves to be a fine testament to the works of grown men and women with real problems. Lucky for us they also happen to be excellent songwriters and instrumentalists. t&c;
