Patterson Hood's a prolific songwriter, cranking out tunes at a relatively rapid clip, premiering them at solo shows, and posting them to his site. But team player that he is, there's only so much space for Hood's material on each Drive-By Truckers disc, making room for partner in crime Mike Cooley and now contributions from bassist Shonna Tucker as well. It's a balance that pays off, too: last year's Brighter Than Creation's Dark was sprawling and diverse-- and possibly the group's best record.
Still, there's the matter of that backlog of songs, and churning out solo albums doesn't seem to be Hood's M.O. But even if it were, saying you're going to get it done apparently doesn't make doing it any easier. Hood's ostensible solo debut, 2004's Killers and Stars, was made three years before its belated release, as a form of what Hood branded "therapy." Yet that's nothing compared to the set of songs that comprise Murdering Oscar (and Other Love Songs), Hood's second album, whose origins stretch back even further than his previous solo disc. One case in point: "Heavy and Hanging", which was written in response to Kurt Cobain's 1994 suicide.
That year also marked Hood's relocation to Athens, Georgia, from his home in Alabama, setting in motion the events that would lead to the Drive-By Truckers. Plenty of things have happened to Hood since then, including a new marriage, fatherhood, and the gradual success of the DBTs, and all these things inform Murdering Oscar to some degree. Even the musicians backing Hood offer a sort of career overview, from fellow Truckers Brad Morgan, Cooley, and Tucker and longtime associate John Neff to producer and Athens staple David Barbe to frequent tourmates Will Johnson and Scott Danbom of Centro-matic, and finally to dad David Hood, legendary Muscle Shoals session bassist. Even the name of Hood's new label, Ruth St., refers to the address of the apartment he and a friend shared when he first moved to Georgia and began work on this record some 15 years ago.
That said, this is hardly the stuff of either nostalgia or what one imagines a Truckers disc full of Hood-only songs would sound like. To his credit Hood has collected 13 tracks that, for whatever reason, hang together well. If anything, the title track (inspired by Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors) and "Heavy and Hanging" (which is paired with the Crazy Horse-y "Walking Around Sense", which may be taking aim at Courtney Love's parenting skills) are among the album's darker moments. The rest largely feature Hood sometimes mirthful, sometimes rueful, but always surprisingly sanguine, even mature, in the way he addresses life's ups and downs.
"Pollyanna", for example, the oldest song on the album, was written as Hood realized his marriage and band Adam's House Cat (which he formed with Cooley before the two reconnected in the Truckers) were both falling apart, but the song's a genial classic rock nugget, while "Foolish Young Bastard", a put-down aimed at an old manager, comes off oddly forgiving and c'est la vie optimistic rather than mean-spirited. "Screwtopia" was written as a sardonic portrait of suburban domestic tranquility, and seems almost wistful (at least until Hood suggests his hypothetical wife take a few more pills to ease her worries, and gives his son a loaded gun to play with).
On the domestic front, Hood's life has turned out better than he predicted all those years ago, at least if his post-marriage and fatherhood tracks are any indication. The moving "Pride of the Yankees" is Hood throwing his protective arms around his newborn child in a post-9/11 world, while "Grandaddy" finds him fast forwarding several more years to a time when he can spoil his future descendants with candy hidden around the house. The poppy "I Understand Now" is Hood happy and content, "She's a Little Randy" is Hood in a silly (and, um, sexy) mood, and "Back of a Bible" is a love song to his wife the singer literally scribbled in the final blank pages of a motel's good book while out on tour.
Nothing here totally upends what we already know of Hood's talents via the Truckers, but it does serve as a supplementary capsule capturing how he ticks, right down to his cover of the Runt-era Todd Rundgren proto alt-country gem "The Range War", a response to anyone that, in Hood's words, thinks all he does is "sit around and listen to Molly Hatchet." What it and the originals on Murdering Oscar do is emphasize Hood's respect for and attraction to lyrical and emotional honestly above all else, the universals that have linked a lot of good music from the past to present. With every note, with every song, Hood sounds like he increasingly, if modestly, recognizes he's part of that great songwriting continuum, working hard to live up to his end of the obligation, as long as it takes.
