Now playing: A Blessing and a Curse, the new album from Drive-By Truckers. The Truckers try to cut loose from their wild-eyed southern boy roots with this one. But the ghosts of Ronnie Van Zant and Lynyrd Skynyrd still haunt them.
This new CD is getting heaps of praise from critics. Here's a sampling:
Drive-By Truckers Tone Down the Git-tar Army: For those only enamored with the Alabama band's full-tilt guitar assault, this disc could be a curse. For those looking for musical maturity and growth, this record is indeed a blessing.
From TFP online: "Blessing" feels and sounds like an album from a band asserting themselves as the greatest rock and roll band on the planet. They may not have the mass appeal yet, but I'll take the Truckers over Coldplay.
Drive-By Truckers: Drive They Said: Thematically, Blessing is still biscuits-and-grits Truckers’ fare. It’s about crosses borne, relatives and friends who’ve died too soon and those left behind in the crucible. It’s about relationships torn asunder or faded away. It’s also about a rock ’n’ roll band that drinks, smokes and carries on. Still, let’s call Blessing a preemptive strike, a cautionary broadside about the pitfalls of being pigeonholed and becoming a rock ’n’ roll cliché.
My personal favorites: "Feb. 14," "Easy on Yourself" and the mournful "World of Hurt." Listen on eMusic.