Drive By Truckers: Decoration Day

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * *)

This hard-nosed, death-soaked Southern country rock outfit (bar-room boogie band-meets-Steve Earle) have defied the conventions and constraints of the genre, notably with their concept album Southern Rock Opera about Lynyrd Skynyrd.

They mostly play their aces gritty and aggressive - the Crazy Horse-crunch of Hell No, I Ain't Happy here opens with a gun being cocked - and have a blue-collar heart: Sink Hole is a punk hoe-down with rapidfire, almost rap-like, lyrics about bankers closing down family farms of "five generations of an unlocked door". Marry Me steps out of the Stones' Exile period, elsewhere the various singers are either gargling gravel or digging deep into backwoods rock'n'roll for their death and incest stories, or they are getting acoustic and intimate in spitfloor pool rooms. Is this one of the best opening lines you've heard in years: "Somethin' 'bout the wrinkle in your forehead tells me there's a fit 'bout to be thrown"?

Call it post-Vietnam, disillusioned "Suthin" country-rock if you like. But from their name through to the final track, the acoustic murder-cum-suicide serenade Loaded Gun in the Closet, these southern death cult boys are to be taken seriously.

Label: New West