Drive-By Truckers exit New West

It's Great to Be Alive

It's been roughly two decades when musicians Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley decided to tie their wagon together and form Drive-By Truckers. And through the countless tours, hundreds (oops, thousands) of shows, the band decided now was the right time for a live album. Three nights at San Francisco's Fillmore is the backdrop for this massively generous 35-song compendium. Yet while there are a few expected lulls in the marathon of music offered, Hood and Cooley's dual engine of ...

English Oceans

It would be easy perhaps even tempting - to label Alabama's Drive By Truckers as simply a rowdy and rambunctious country rock outfit that goes all out to make their insurgent sound heard. Not surprisingly, it was their landmark opus, "Southern Rock Opera," an album detailing the exploits of a fictional '70s Dixie-bred outfit called "Betamax Guillotine," that helped solidify both their sound and reputation. They've more or less continued to reinforce that stoic ...

Ugly Buildings, Whores, and Politicians

Greatest hits albums are a tricky business. If the band is thoughtful enough to have created cohesive, thematic records, a greatest hits collection only disrupts this order. As such, the release of a compilation is usually not motivated by the band's artistic desires, but instead the record company's monetary ones. "Ugly Buildings" does not feature any new or unreleased material, which makes it irrelevant to any fans who already own the band's complete discography. ...