When Drive-By Truckers aren’t playing on Booker T. or Bettye
LaVette’s albums, they’ve got a good thing of their own going. They’re
easily one of the hardest-working bands in music today and seem to have
an endless slate of tour dates. They’ve released multiple albums in the
past half-dozen years and are currently working on another one, due out
next year. So now’s the time for a rarties collection and, in true
Drive-By Truckers fashion, it’s more than just thrown together during a
break. The band returned to the studio and completed a few of the dozen
tracks on The Fine Print. Patterson Hood’s “George Jones Talkin’
Cell Phone Blues” is a hard-charging intro to the set, while “The Great
Car Dealer War” is a menacing mid-album stomper. Jason Isbell’s “TVA”
and “When the Well Runs Dry” serve as gentle reminders that Drive-By
Truckers were better when he was in the fold. “Rebels” is a great take
on a Tom Petty song (which the Truckers originally recorded for the TV
show King of the Hill), while their rendition of Bob Dylan’s
“Like a Rolling Stone” is imbued with a sense of slow Southern pity
instead big-city spite. The Fine Print doesn’t feel tossed off.
It sounds like another installment in the Truckers’ fine oeuvre.
— Jeremy Willets
This article appears in Sep 2-8, 2009.
