The Drive : Releases >>
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Moon Is the New Earth >>
Brighter Than Creation's Dark >>
The Dirty South >>
Southern Rock Opera >>
You don't need a bottle of Jack or even a trace of Southern lineage to appreciate the genius of Drive-By Truckers' Southern Rock Opera. Without a hint of irony, the Athens, Georgia, quintet creates a fast-driving, hard-living tribute to the indelible music and legacy of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Like any good concept album, there's a modicum of plot and a theme to these 20 songs (loosely based around the rise and fall of fictitious Southern rock band Betamax Guillotine), but the best tracks make you forget the story line altogether: "Birmingham", "Zip City" and "Let There Be Rock". The "opera" aspects bog things down a bit--you probably only need to hear the spoken-word track "The Three Great Alabama Icons" once--but the overall concept still comes off without a hitch. The lyrics are great, the trio of electric guitars is blessed with raw production, and the tunes--though lacking the pop sensibility of, say, "Gimme Three Steps"--will have you cranking up the album for your friends. And, after a few spins of Southern Rock Opera, you might even find yourself digging out those old Skynyrd LPs to hear the real thing again. --Jason Verlinde
Relationship of Command >>
It's maddeningly rare that a band can provide a visceral thrill--Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Rage Against The Machine's "Killing In The Name"--and still work the grey matter as well. Here's a band that's refined the art. Hailing from El Paso, Texas, At The Drive-In come poised somewhere between the rabid showmanship of The Make-Up and the avant-complexity of emo pioneers The Lapse, but through sheer adrenaline alone, leave both bands choking on their exhaust fumes. Sure, they're got their unique selling point--lead singer Cedric Bixler and guitarist Omar Rodriguez both sport immense Afros--but this band is no idle gimmickry. Recorded after a stint touring with Rage Against The Machine, Relationship Of Command is the punk-rock real deal, the angular hardcore dynamic of "One Armed Scissor" and "Rolodex Propaganda" (the latter featuring the rabid holler of a guest-starring Iggy Pop) as focused and affecting as any rock music to come out of America for the last five years. "And the paramedics fell into the wound like a re-hired scab at a fair-headed plant, an anaesthetic penance beneath a hail of contraband!" spits Bixler on the album's high water mark, "Invalid Letter Dept". "Dancing on the corpses' ashes!" What does it all mean? Do you really need to ask? All get down for At The Drive-In, punk-rock heroes for a cerebral America. --Louis Pattison
Decoration Day >>
In/Casino/Out >>
Wires and the Concept of Breathing [Us Import] >>
Horizons >>
Pizza Deliverance >>
