More Truckers...

My post early got me in the mood for some DBT so I decided to dig out my new vinyl copy of "Decoration Day."

The Truckers recently released their entire back-catalog on vinyl, save for "Souther Rock Opera" which had been previosuly released on vinyl. I picked up "Decoration Day" on 180g vinyl last week. It's always been my favorite DBT album. It was the first album of theirs I heard and my musical comrade at the time, Eric, and I listened to it constantly. We'd repeat songs and implore the other to listen to "this" lick or gush about the instrumentation in "that" section. It's been in heavy rotation on my stereo since it came out in summer 2003 and I know the songs like the back of my hand.

At 15 songs it's not a short album, taking up 3 sides of vinyl, but it still stands up as a cohesive piece of art. The subject matter for most of the songs is dark (murder, suicide, divorce), the mood heavy and the tempos fairly slow. All of which just make it sound bigger and more powerful, especially when played back on vinyl. Patterson agrees,

This one probably makes the biggest difference on vinyl of any of the reissues. I'm thrilled with how well this album has aged and how good it sounds on vinyl...
Please note, it was too long for 1 disc, but too short for 4 sides, so it is three sided. Sequenced that way, it flows like the suspension on a 76 Eldorado, burns a little too much gas, but tops out at around 120. Loaded Gun in the Closet is still one of the best songs I've ever heard. I couldn't be happier to see this album finally getting it's needle-dropping due.

The decision to release the back-catalog on vinyl was driven by Patterson Hood,

For decades, the geeks have cornered normal folk at parties to harangue them with the “rah vinyl, boo CDs” argument. Now one geek, Drive-By Truckers founder Patterson Hood, has taken the argument directly to his record label, New West.

After half a decade of lobbying, Hood convinced New West to re-release five early Trucker albums on vinyl earlier last month. The Southern rock revisionists’ latest, “Brighter than Creation’s Dark”, may also get a vinyl release soon.

“I fought for this for years and years,” said Hood, who leads his Alabama band into a sold-out Paradise tomorrow night. “When we signed our first record deal with Lost Highway for ‘Southern Rock Opera,’ that was a key point of negotiation. We made them promise to put it out on vinyl.”

As a DBT fan and a fairly recent convert to vinyl this is just further confirmation that these guys are the coolest rock band in America today, sorry Wilco. The Truckers are just grittier, dirtier and still small enough that you can catch them in a filthy old theatre that reaks of cheap beer.

I'd do a song-by-song review but Patterson and Jason were kind enough to provide their own commentary over at the DBT website. For now I'll just say that "Heathens" has the best production on the album but "Decoration Day" is the best song on the album.