The DBT’s have, in Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell, three of the finest and more prolific songwriters around today. Between them they fill this album with pure gold. As Southern rock bands go, they draw a distinct parallel with, and yet also describe a clear development from, bands such as Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers.
The DBT’s love telling stories. Their songs relate tales of characters both real and fictional, creating a kind of mythology around both as the lines between blur and distort. As Hood states in the album’s liner notes, “It’s only true if you believe it. It’s only a lie if you don’t”. There is also a fierce intelligence at work here, so we get characters who are achingly real and cliché free, steeped in the history and atmosphere of the South.
And their tales are told along to music that is natural and organic, well fed on the pure bullshit that’s around them (Rednecks, bigotry, republicanism and religious fanaticism) but tended with genuine care and pride. It really does sound as if this is the only thing they could ever really contemplate doing.
The DBT’s rock. Right from the opening bass drum that pounds into the riff of ‘Where The Devil Don’t Stay’, their three guitar attack leads the way through the likes of ‘The Day John Henry Died’ (with the immortal line, “John Henry was a steel-driving bastard but John Henry was a bastard just the same”, ‘Carl Perkins Cadillac’ (a tribute to legendary Sun Records boss Sam Phillips), ‘The Buford Stick’ (relating the true story of Sheriff Buford Pusser who took a hickory stick to the stills of McNairy County and had his wife murdered and home blown-up as a consequence – see 1973 film Walking Tall), and the immense ‘Boys From Alabama’, with a snare drum that sounds like a chain-gang crashing hammers against railroad tracks, or the pounding machinery of the local Ford factory. A mention is more than due here to Shonna Tucker (bass) and Brad Morgan (drums) who stand up to, and perfectly harness the force of three guitars with amazing ease and strength of purpose.
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Elsewhere the DBT’s show us a more sensitive and reflective side, the very beautiful ‘Danko/Manuel’ being a prime example. From the pen of Isbell it’s a gentle, acoustic-guitar led tribute to The Band (apparently written with the viewpoint of Levon Helm in mind) that also manages to hint at the ravages that can be wrought by ‘life on the road’ – “Can you hear that singing? Sounds like gold. Maybe I can only hear it in my head. Fifteen years ago we owned that road now its rolling over us instead. Richard Manuel is dead”. Album closer ‘Goddam Lonely Love’ (also by Isbell) is similarly beautiful and haunting with couplets that make your heart swell and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up (like prime time Paul Westerberg).
One track, ‘Tornadoes’ is particularly poignant given the recent Tsunami disaster. Written by Hood it captures something of the fearsome power that nature can wield against humanity, as in a weary grit ‘n’ gravel voice he relates the devastation wrought when a tornado hits town. “It came without warning said Bobbi Jo McLean ……….. all she can remember is it sounded like a train."
We can but imagine.
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