The countdown continues with hip-hop both old school and really new school, with three towering smash singles and an underrated rock record.
24.
Album: Brighter Than Creation’s Dark — The Drive-By Truckers (New West, 2008)
This album got nowhere close to the attention it deserved, with critics seeming to collectively deem that their moment had passed. It hadn’t. From my year-end list:
Though Brighter Than Creation’s Dark peaks at the very beginning with the saddest, loveliest song Patterson Hood will ever write, it holds its shape for an epic 19 songs and 75 minutes. Hood takes the toll of the Iraq war from two vantage points, ruminates on road life, spits in the wind of recession, and tips his cap to printer-of-legends “the great John Ford.” Musical life-partner Mike Cooley spins one wonderful, low-rent character sketch after another, several of them probably autobiographical, led by a definitive metal-to-grunge saga he’s old enough to have lived and a shaggy confession that outs country storyteller Tom T. Hall as this great band’s biggest influence.
Song Sample: “Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife”
