Decoration Day

This review was kindly contributed by George Light. Thank's George!! (especially for the "yankee translation"!)

Drive-By Truckers, Decoration Day

Quintet originally from Florence , AL (think Muscle Shoals) who now
call Athens, GA home. Album produced by Athens native Dave Barbe (Sugar).

Great Southern fried take on country rock and a fine collection of
plaintive, melancholy tunes. Think edgier Eagles ("Ol. No. 49," "James
Dean," and "The Last Resort"), mid-70s Stones (Exile to Some Girls), Lynyrd
Skynyrd, and The Outlaws (the country not the doobie stuff). Lest this
laundry list of AOR behemoths scare you off; this record is utterly
fresh filled with fine playing (see esp. Barbe's subtle additional guitar
riffs on "Your Daddy Hates Me") and compelling characters developing
out of sophisticated if greasy lyrics ("Outfit," "Sounds Better in the
Song," "Loaded Gun in the Closet").
Choicest Tracks: 10, 6, 4, 8, 3

Yankee Translation: Decoration Day is the original post-bellum Southern
moniker for Memorial Day

1) Don Henley as Johnny Reb doing a slow sad almost straight
country tune about incest
2) Southern grotesques from Flannery O'Connorland
3) The first rocker on the album; the title suits its angry sound, dig
the beer can opening
4) "Already Gone": Theme and Variations. Admit it you dig the
riff , and these lyrics are way better than the Eagles'!
5) Features some fine pedal steel and fiddlin', companion to piece
to track 4
6) The sad story of familial ties/traditions: "Don't worry about
losing your accent / a Southern man tells better jokes" slow
7) Country meditation on The Bible Belt and its discontents
8) Features acoustic Upright bass and a finely critical take on
"Freebird": "And 'Lord knows, I can't change', / sounds
better in the song"
9) Medium tempo straight ahead rocker
10) Epochal; the long slow one that burns down the house. Barbe's
guitar solo near the end is astonishingin its subtlety and force
11) sorta bland rocker
12) Wurlitzer solo; country rocker Parsonsesque vein
13) Eaglesy country stomp; think Farm Aid dixiestyle!
14) Longish title track, a fine entry in the anti-war canon; see
"And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda"
15) Pedal Steel guitar; what family secrets do your closets hide?