Artist: Drive-By Truckers
Album: The Fine Print (A Collection Of Oddities And Rarities)
Year: 2009
Grade: 4 pretzels
The career of the Drive-By Truckers has been characterized by two things: quality and quantity. Few bands can match the complete package of songwriting, instrumental ability and tunefulness that the Truckers posses and virtually no one can compete with them when it comes to prolific output. Since 2001, the band has released five albums, all of which are pretty much solid gold from start to finish. Although they remain somewhat under the radar (probably because southern rock isn’t the hippest of genres), this decade has seen them hit one of those stretches of unbelievable artistic consistency that usually only legendary bands like the Rolling Stones stumble upon. In less than ten years, this Alabama band has flooded the world with great songs.
The Truckers wrap up this decade with The Fine Print, a convenient collection of some loose odds and ends that never made it onto their albums. Many bands do this, since it’s an easy way to make some extra cash and appease fans waiting for the next proper album. These types of compilations, full of b-sides and covers, can be entertaining and might contain the hidden gem here and there, but usually they’re just sub-par material that was obviously left off an album for a reason. The Fine Print, however, is almost as good as a full Truckers album, which is nothing short of unbelievable. Apparently, between the three main songwriters the Truckers have had throughout the ‘00s, their well of great music is bottomless.
Virtually every shade of song the Truckers have recorded is represented on The Fine Print. Mike Cooley contributes a couple of scorching, twangy rockers and the now-departed Jason Isbell showcases his frankly astonishing “TVA”, a song that appears to be about dams on the surface, but is, in reality, about so much more (he crams a coming-of-age story in there as well). That single song is better than anything Isbell recorded for his second solo album that was released this year. However, as with virtually everything Trucker-related, the star of the show is bandleader Patterson Hood and his grizzled tales of southern life and dichotomies. Hood scores big here with the slow-burning “The Great Car Dealer War” and an anthemic cover of Warren Zevon’s “Play It All Night Long”, which sounds like a dead ringer for an outtake from the band’s 2001 masterpiece, Southern Rock Opera. How this awesome track got cut from what was already a double album is something I’ll probably never understand.
Besides Zevon, The Fine Print features a handful of other passionate covers, highlighted by a show-stopping rendition of “Like A Rolling Stone”, which retains all of the energy of Dylan’s original while adding in some fun, southern attitude. The band even finds time to be a little silly, with the bluesy hilarity of “Mrs. Claus’ Kimono”, sung from the perspective of “a sinister elf with a sinister plan” who’s lusting after Father Christmas’ wife (shout outs to Newt Gingrich and a reindeer named Wynona also make appearances). While this is the only track that clearly would have never made it onto an album, it’s so unspeakably funny that I can only thank the band over and over again for releasing it. The Drive-By Truckers are very quietly owning this decade when it comes to musical consistency and when their castoffs and recording dregs are this stellar, it’s no wonder their albums continue to be near-flawless.
The Truckers wrap up this decade with The Fine Print, a convenient collection of some loose odds and ends that never made it onto their albums. Many bands do this, since it’s an easy way to make some extra cash and appease fans waiting for the next proper album. These types of compilations, full of b-sides and covers, can be entertaining and might contain the hidden gem here and there, but usually they’re just sub-par material that was obviously left off an album for a reason. The Fine Print, however, is almost as good as a full Truckers album, which is nothing short of unbelievable. Apparently, between the three main songwriters the Truckers have had throughout the ‘00s, their well of great music is bottomless.
Virtually every shade of song the Truckers have recorded is represented on The Fine Print. Mike Cooley contributes a couple of scorching, twangy rockers and the now-departed Jason Isbell showcases his frankly astonishing “TVA”, a song that appears to be about dams on the surface, but is, in reality, about so much more (he crams a coming-of-age story in there as well). That single song is better than anything Isbell recorded for his second solo album that was released this year. However, as with virtually everything Trucker-related, the star of the show is bandleader Patterson Hood and his grizzled tales of southern life and dichotomies. Hood scores big here with the slow-burning “The Great Car Dealer War” and an anthemic cover of Warren Zevon’s “Play It All Night Long”, which sounds like a dead ringer for an outtake from the band’s 2001 masterpiece, Southern Rock Opera. How this awesome track got cut from what was already a double album is something I’ll probably never understand.
Besides Zevon, The Fine Print features a handful of other passionate covers, highlighted by a show-stopping rendition of “Like A Rolling Stone”, which retains all of the energy of Dylan’s original while adding in some fun, southern attitude. The band even finds time to be a little silly, with the bluesy hilarity of “Mrs. Claus’ Kimono”, sung from the perspective of “a sinister elf with a sinister plan” who’s lusting after Father Christmas’ wife (shout outs to Newt Gingrich and a reindeer named Wynona also make appearances). While this is the only track that clearly would have never made it onto an album, it’s so unspeakably funny that I can only thank the band over and over again for releasing it. The Drive-By Truckers are very quietly owning this decade when it comes to musical consistency and when their castoffs and recording dregs are this stellar, it’s no wonder their albums continue to be near-flawless.
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