Seems that novelty acts are todays topic, what with discussion of the Sex Pistols and Willie Idol.
Do I dare mention a current act? Anybody going to this show?
DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
"Decoration Day"
New West
THE IMMORTAL LEE COUNTY KILLERS
"Love Is a Charm of Powerful Trouble"
Estrus
With most mainstream country-pop tunes as upbeat as toothpaste jingles, old-style laments have become the specialty of alt-country. Drive-By Truckers' "Decoration Day" opens with just such a bummer, "The Deeper In," a ballad that singer, guitarist and principal lyricist Patterson Hood says is about "the only two people currently serving time in America for consensual brother/sister incest." Yet the quintet doesn't deal only in gothic dirges. The album's unofficial theme song is the rollicking "Hell No, I Ain't Happy," which gives doom a kick in the pants.
Although the band hails from Athens, Ga., and this album was produced by Sugar's David Barbe, its style is unfazed by R.E.M., Husker Du or other post-punk influences. "Outfit," one of two numbers by new singer-guitarist Jason Isbell, offers a compendium of tips for the working-class Southern man, and the crucial one is "don't sing with a fake British accent." Still, the quintet doesn't simply accept the trailer-park existence that so many of its songs document. In the best of these songs, the Truckers stay true to their heritage while fighting to free themselves from its bummers.
A swaggering challenge to the authenticity of every other contemporary neo-blues duo -- and there are now quite a few of them -- the Immortal Lee County Killers alternate between primitivist acoustic fare and punkier electric stuff. The Alabama duo's "Love Is a Charm of Powerful Trouble" samples Howlin' Wolf, covers Willie Dixon and opens with a song titled "Robert Johnson," but it also evokes such latter-day bluesmen as Jimi Hendrix and the Gun Club. If the results aren't entirely coherent, they are appealingly brash. Change the gender of "She's Not Afraid of Anything Walking," and the Killers could be celebrating themselves.
