The Drive-By Truckers – The Big To-Do
Release Date: March 16, 2010
Highlights: Daddy Learned To Fly, Birthday Boy, After The Scene Dies, Eyes Like Glue
It always bums me out when one of my favorite bands puts out an album that I feel is not up to par with their previous releases. This is unfortunately the case with one of my favorite bands, The Drive-By Truckers. On their 2010 release “The Big To-Do” I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The album starts off strong actually with a great Patterson Hood song “Daddy Learned To Fly” which I thought set the album up for a slam-dunk but instead it just started to fall flat for me right as the second track “The Fourth Night of My Drinking” kicked in. This was just another “I’m drunk and can’t find my car” composition. This really bummed me out because I feel like the Truckers over the years have showed people that they weren’t a bunch of dumb rednecks that wrote about “drankin’ and fightin’” but that they were a band of substantial songwriters. This song just made me go “are you fucking kidding me?”
The Mike Cooley compositions on this album are the true highlights of this album. “Birthday Boy” is the first of only three Cooley songs and I love how this tune steps into a Replacements kind of territory showing that Cooley is a really skilled songwriter and is not afraid to step outside of the box. The other two Cooley tracks are both fantastic songs that hold their own while wearing different hats. “Get Downtown” is a psychobilly kind of track that has a great groove sounding like a cross between Tom Waits and Social Distortion while “Eyes Like Glue” is a beautiful acoustic/Rhodes piano track that once again is outside of the box from the rest of the songs on this album.
The album also features two compositions by bassist Shona Tucker which come nowhere near even touching the greatness of the two tracks (“Purgatory Line” and “Homefield Advantage”) she wrote for the previous album “Brighter Than Creation’s Dark.” These two tracks literally sound like throw away tracks that were just included in order for her to get a couple of writing credits. Even as bad as the Hood songs are on this album, these songs just stick out like sore thumbs. Why not give Cooley a couple of more songs and maybe this could’ve been a ½ great album as opposed to only having 3 great songs.
With the exception of the opening track “Daddy Learned To Fly” and the extremely well written and executed “After The Scene Dies,” the rest of the Hood tracks are barely listenable. Hood usually comes on strong with his material yet on this album he is without a doubt the weakest link in this band. I know there are people out there that still stand by the fact that the Drive-By Truckers haven’t been as good since Jason Isbell departed but I totally disagree. Their last album “Brighter Than Creation’s Dark” is one of my favorite albums of all time and I think it shows that this band is completely capable of turning out quality material and putting out an album that can literally move you and make you feel like you’re listening to something special.
This album doesn’t give me this experience. This album plays more like a Patterson Hood solo album with a couple of really lame Shona Tucker tracks and 3 really awesome Mike Cooley songs. I can only hope that Mike Cooley will step out some time and put out a solo album because in my opinion, he is the strongest part of this band yet plays such a minimalist role on this album.
So I guess in a nutshell I have to say that The Big To-Do is pretty much The Big To-Don’t!
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