{"id":2100,"date":"2010-04-24T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greatsouthernbrainfart.wordpress.com\/?p=2100"},"modified":"2022-01-06T19:54:45","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T00:54:45","slug":"album-review-the-drive-by-truckers-the-big-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=2100","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Drive-By Truckers – The Big To-Do"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Drive-By Truckers – The Big To-Do<\/strong><\/a>
\nRelease Date: March 16, 2010
\nHighlights: Daddy Learned To Fly, Birthday Boy, After The Scene Dies, Eyes Like Glue<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 This is unfortunately the case with one of my favorite bands, The Drive-By Truckers.\u00a0 On their 2010 release \u201cThe Big To-Do\u201d I just couldn\u2019t believe what I was hearing.\u00a0 The album starts off strong actually with a great Patterson Hood song \u201cDaddy Learned To Fly\u201d 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 \u201cThe Fourth Night of My Drinking\u201d kicked in.\u00a0 This was just another \u201cI\u2019m drunk and can\u2019t find my car\u201d composition.\u00a0 This really bummed me out because I feel like the Truckers over the years have showed people that they weren\u2019t a bunch of dumb rednecks that wrote about \u201cdrankin\u2019 and fightin\u2019\u201d but that they were a band of substantial songwriters.\u00a0 This song just made me go \u201care you fucking kidding me?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mike Cooley compositions on this album are the true highlights of this album.\u00a0 \u201cBirthday Boy\u201d 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.\u00a0 The other two Cooley tracks are both fantastic songs that hold their own while wearing different hats.\u00a0 \u201cGet Downtown\u201d is a psychobilly kind of track that has a great groove sounding like a cross between Tom Waits and Social Distortion while \u201cEyes Like Glue\u201d is a beautiful acoustic\/Rhodes piano track that once again is outside of the box from the rest of the songs on this album.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The album also features two compositions by bassist Shona Tucker which come nowhere near even touching the greatness of the two tracks (\u201cPurgatory Line\u201d and \u201cHomefield Advantage\u201d) she wrote for the previous album \u201cBrighter Than Creation\u2019s Dark.\u201d\u00a0 These two tracks literally sound like throw away tracks that were just included in order for her to get a couple of writing credits.\u00a0 Even as bad as the Hood songs are on this album, these songs just stick out like sore thumbs.\u00a0 Why not give Cooley a couple of more songs and maybe this could\u2019ve been a \u00bd great album as opposed to only having 3 great songs.<\/p>\n

With the exception of the opening track \u201cDaddy Learned To Fly\u201d and the extremely well written and executed \u201cAfter The Scene Dies,\u201d the rest of the Hood tracks are barely listenable.\u00a0 Hood usually comes on strong with his material yet on this album he is without a doubt the weakest link in this band.\u00a0 I know there are people out there that still stand by the fact that the Drive-By Truckers haven\u2019t been as good since Jason Isbell departed but I totally disagree.\u00a0 Their last album \u201cBrighter Than Creation\u2019s Dark\u201d 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\u2019re listening to something special.<\/p>\n

This album doesn\u2019t give me this experience.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

So I guess in a nutshell I have to say that The Big To-Do is pretty much The Big To-Don\u2019t!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 This is unfortunately the case with one of my favorite bands, The Drive-By Truckers.\u00a0 On their 2010 release \u201cThe Big To-Do\u201d I just couldn\u2019t believe what I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,277],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-reviews","category-music-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19884,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions\/19884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}