Decoration Day

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Decoration Day
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  1. Audio CD: Release Date 2003-06-17
  2. Publisher: New West Records
  3. Artist: Drive By Truckers
  4. Sales Rank in Music: #7291

Product Review

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They earned wide acclaim with the double-disc Southern Rock Opera, a sprawling concept album about Lynyrd Skynyrd. Their three-guitar lineup and greasy look signify big, dumb rock in the minds of many, but their songwriting is relentlessly whip-smart. And what may be their greatest song, "The Living Bubba," is an ode to a righteous, hard-rocking redneck felled by AIDS. No, the Drive-By Truckers never do anything by the book, so it's no surprise that with Decoration Day, the band's first release for indie New West Records, Patterson Hood and his mates take another rewarding left turn. The album boasts a handful of crowd-pleasing, party-starting cuts, like the brash, cranky rocker "Hell No, I Ain't Happy" and the Stones ringer "Marry Me." Yet more common are moments of startling beauty (the steel solos on "The Deeper In" and "Loaded Gun in the Closet" and the jangling guitars, rolling melodies, and soulful fiddle breaks of "Heathens" and "My Sweet Annette") and heavy doses of recrimination and regret, as in the back-to-back suicide tunes "When the Pin Hits the Shell" and "Do It Yourself." --Anders Smith Lindall
Title Tracks for Decoration Day

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (47 customer reviews)

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Follow-Up to an All-Time Classic, August 2, 2003
James F. Colobus (Pittsburgh, PA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Decoration Day (Audio CD)
You can call Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley a lot of things, but insecure isn't one of them. Not since Lynyrd Skynyrd brought in a young Okie by the name of Stevie Gaines has a great rock band suppressed their egos and added a talented guitarist and songwriter of the caliber of Jason Isbell. Isbell, the new addition to the Drive-By Truckers' three-guitar attack, is absolutely spectacular, a fact to which anyone who has seen him shine on lead guitar duties during their current tour can attest. Based on the evidence from Decoration Day, the kid can write songs and sing 'em too. Coming on the heels of the all-time classic, Southern Rock Opera, Decoration Day had a lot to live up to. The DBT did the smart thing and seemingly wrote Decoration Day to please only themselves. It initially comes across as less accessible than its predecessor, but repeated listens reveal it to be a richly rewarding album. More than any DBT record before it, Decoration Day feels utterly anachronistic,...Read more


9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Have, March 29, 2004
James Carragher (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Decoration Day (Audio CD)
Brash and brilliant as Decoration Day is, Drive By Truckers sound on it like a band in transition. When they rock, hard and often, their sound comes straight from the muscle and rowdy tradition of the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the mostly overlooked Georgia Satellites. Hell No, I Ain't Happy is the template and while it is a great sing-a-long bar line of resentment, it's also probably the weakest of the CD's very generous fifteen cuts. Decoration Day excels because where the Truckers were previously mostly a vehicle for front man Patterson Hood, they now showcase two more major writing talents, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell. With their contributions and Hood's own better compositions, it's as if the Truckers have mainlined some William Faulkner and Flannery O'Conner, put a whole new true twist on all those tired Southern traditions and cliches. So we get Hood's sympathetic tale of incest, The Deeper In ("..but you took to his jawline and his long sandy hair. How he...Read more


7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Rock N' Roll is alive again, September 27, 2003
dj_wacker (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Decoration Day (Audio CD)
Incredibly talented band. This, their newest album, is their best yet. All three of the band's songwriters, Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, and Jason Isbell, are great. I like Jason Isbell's song, Outfit, the best on this album, but they are all fresh. His guitar playing is monumental. Mike Cooley has a great deep voice and writes songs that would read well as short stories. Patterson Hood, a natural frontman, kicks the album off with a rolling story song that grabs me every time I hear it. This band has been appropriately compared to Lynard Skynard. The suprising thing is that they pull off that southern feel without sounding cheesy, sarcastic, or imitative. This is the logical extension of southern influenced rock and punk that should of came out of the seventies. These guys may have even been capable of saving music in the eighties. Too bad they were too young. If you like guitars and good songs without any of the bs spandex eighties nonsense, buy this album, pop open a...Read more

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