Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do [2LP]

Drive-By Truckers cranked the amps and wrote in the present tense on The Big To-Do, their 2010 debut for ATO and one of the hardest-rocking records in their catalogue.

Produced by longtime collaborator David Barbe, the album came out of three blocks of sessions in 2009 that yielded enough songs for two records, with the rest saved for Go-Go Boots. Keyboardist Jay Gonzalez had joined the lineup, and his organ and piano give the band a fuller, Heartbreakers-style swing. Patterson Hood called it their most rocking record since Southern Rock Opera.

Unlike many earlier DBT albums, which mined the Southern past, this one looks squarely at its own moment, with circus imagery standing in for life on the road. "Daddy Learned to Fly" opens with Hood at his most tender, while Mike Cooley's "Birthday Boy" was written and slotted in after the album was supposedly finished. Shonna Tucker's "You Got Another" brings a soulful ache, and "The Flying Wallendas" carries the big-top theme to a towering peak.

Elsewhere, Hood and Cooley trade songs about hard work and harder times, sharp-eyed but never preachy, and they sound as relevant now as they did then. For fans of Southern rock with brains and bruises, this is a high point worth keeping close.