DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
A Blessing and a Curse
New West
· David Barbe, who produced 2004’s The Dirty South, returns to twirl knobs on the band’s seventh release.
Drive-By Truckers walk an uneasy tightrope. On one side, there are the hardcore fans, apparently many of them rock journalists, who have no problem tossing off terms like "the greatest rock band in the world" even while admitting that the term is cliché (although they don’t admit it’s also idiotic). They seem to expect no more than what the band is currently giving.
On the other side, there is this iconic, ironic, tuneful band that seems to slither between obvious categories while remaining in no jeopardy of breaking any new ground. Yep, they are cool, interesting and easy on the ears and they diverge not one whit from that path on A Blessing and a Curse. Still, any kind of hype that compares the storytelling of Patterson Hood to that of Steve Earle or, egad, casts the whole outfit into a new millennium version of The Band is, like Dolly Parton’s post-weight loss breasts – stretching things a bit.
And as much as teeth, melody and some diamond lines stalk these 11 tracks, occasionally it sounds uncomfortably like somebody exhumed the Eagles and relocated them to Alabama.
Yet, there are so many pretty and honest moments here that one wonders what would happen if they could just break out of the echoes of past sounds and find their future. Then those "stretching-it" comparisons might ring true.
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