Drive-By Truckers don’t owe us shit. They’ve never made a bad or even a mediocre album in their two decades, even though they’ve given themselves many opportunities to do so. And considering their occasionally acrimonious lineup changes and bold conceptual gambits, they’d have many valid excuses if that fate were to come to pass. But depending on your affinity for 2008’s generous-to-a-fault Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, it’s either been six years or 10 since their last truly great album. English Oceans isn’t great, but it’s not mediocre and certainly not bad—but its reception most likely will be predicated on whether or not you think Drive-By Truckers owe you anything more than a “Drive-By Truckers album.”
They seemed due for a shake up, particularly after the hiatus occurring following 2011’s Go-Go Boots. Bassist Shonna Tucker (who started contributing songs and vocals on Brighter) and pedal-steel specialist John Neff left the band, while founding members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley both made solo records. And in several aspects, this is a return to form; English Oceans is much more of a “rock” record than the Muscle Shoals-influenced Go-Go Boots, though DBT have retained enough groove to the point where there’s just as much Stones in their sound as there is Skynyrd, probably more so. And that’s a good thing, as they had the tendency to be a lumbering musical entity even during their peak days.
It’s also the first time since their 2001 breakthrough Southern Rock Opera where the songwriting duties are split solely between Cooley and Hood. More pointedly, it’s the first time the songwriting duties have been split equally. And that allows you to hear Drive-By Truckers in a completely different way, because not only does Cooley reestablish himself after being relegated to a bit player on Go-Go Boots and The Big To-Do, he actually puts this album on his back.
In the past, he hasn’t been underrated so much as overshadowed. Hood’s been often seen as DBT’s head and heart, whereas Cooley operates more from the gut and groin, the sidekick, the comic relief. Cooley still comes up with some instantly quotable, real-talk snark about the sad sex lives of white-collar supervisors (“Trophy tail wives taking boner pill rides for the price of a Happy Meal”) and a henpecked friend (“Said she only hollered when she'd stood as much as she could stand/ Jimmy's ego can take it ‘baby go on and fake it loud as you can’"). But he’s also developed a kind of redneck, cosmic profundity to rival that of early Isaac Brock. While still spoken in plain language, Cooley gets at the kind of accidental enlightenment available to intelligent, if undereducated men given repetitive tasks and a lot of time to mull over things. The construction worker on the shit-hot “Shit Shots Count” notes “Meat’s just meat and it's all born dying.../ Somebody's gotta mop up the A-1 somebody's gotta mop up the blood,” while a tumultuous relationship on “Natural Light” is “As cold as a loveless embrace/ Or hot like a low seething rage.”
Cooley’s superlative performance on English Oceans would be more worthy of celebration if it wasn’t negated by Hood’s most non-committal songwriting to date. “When He’s Gone”, “Til He’s Dead or Rises”, and “Pauline Hawkins” are all variations on the same inert gender dynamics, pro forma Dixie rock with gawky choruses that I suppose one could applaud for being lyrically succinct: “She can't stand to have him around/ But she always misses him when he's gone,” “love is like cancer/ And I am immune,” “She’ll ride him until he’s dead/ Or rises to the occasion.” But Hood never uses these sturdy, nondescript phrases to bear any additional detail or personality, and that’s problematic for a songwriter of his nature: there’s never been a strong melody or a killer riff that’s saved a lyrically weak DBT song.
The gap is even more clear when the duo delve into politics. Cooley’s “Made Up English Oceans” alternates the surreal and hyper-real in a manner similar to PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake, invoking right-wing zealots and god-fearing religious factions while leaving worlds open to the interpretation. Conversely, Hood’s “The Part of Him” recalls the strawmanning that marred The Dirty South, leaning hard on stilted rhymes (“His integrity was phoning in/ Totally Nixonian”) and shrugged jokes about wingnuts and teabags. As with “Pauline Hawkins” and “When He’s Gone”, there’s no sense of place or humanity; it’s something Hood could’ve cooked up after a jag of "House of Cards", to say nothing of the likely inspiration for “When Walter Went Crazy”.
Which is to say that the truly great Drive-By Truckers albums may have been unified by a concept, but the great songs they’ve made throughout their career are inspired by real people, whether it’s “The Living Bubba”, George Wallace, the only people in America imprisoned for consensual incest, Buford Pusser, or Craig Lieske. If you don’t know the last name, he served as DBT’s merch guy, was a fixture in Athens’ music scene, and was remembered fondly by his community upon his death in January 2013. He’s the inspiration for English Oceans’ showstopping closer “Grand Canyon”, and it’s DBT’s most musically rich and expansive song to date, seven-minutes of acoustic guitars and vocals that positively gleam in waltz time. Hood’s lyrics are equally up to the task, a meditation on their last great memories with Lieske, the therapeutic value of the road and the supernatural. It’ll probably be their closer for the next decade, and if Drive-By Truckers are still touring in 10 years, that’s a good thing. For now, English Oceans ensures they’ll back on the road, where they’re still one of the best things going and Drive-By Truckers probably don’t owe us much more than that.
