English Oceans
The big buzz on Drive-By Truckers’ 12th album is that Mike Cooley, the band’s secondary writer after Patterson Hood, penned six of the album’s 13 tunes, making *English Oceans* a dialogue between the two senior members. This friendly conversation/competition only further strengthens a band that’s always considered songwriting of premium importance. Recorded over 13 days at Chase Park Transduction Studios in Athens, Ga., with their longtime producer David Barbe, *English Oceans* features nasty, grungy guitars (“Pauline Hawkins”), stinging social commentary (Cooley’s “Made Up English Oceans,” Hood’s “The Part of Him”), and a virtual walk through rock ’n’ roll history, with the opening Lynyrd Skynyrd barroom romp “S\*\*\* Shots Count” and the chiming Byrds-like “Primer Coat” (or is that R.E.M., considering its Athens roots?). There\'s a Celtic vibe to “Grand Canyon,” a tribute to Craig Lieske, a longtime member of the band’s road crew who died suddenly and to whom the album is dedicated.
English Oceans is the first album since Drive-By Truckers' 2001 breakthrough Southern Rock Opera where the songwriting duties are split solely between Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. In several aspects, it's a return to form.
Even at their most maddeningly inconsistent, there's still something about this band that draws you back in.
Life is always messy on Drive-By Truckers albums, populated by the endless cast of assorted lowlifes and down-and-outs that spring from the minds of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley.
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It shouldn't come as a surprise to longtime Drive-By Truckers fans that the Athens, Ga.-based band's 10th album sees another lineup change.
Nothing here reinvents the wheel, but the 12th album from Georgia's Drive-By Truckers finds their soulful, classic-rock storytelling at its best, writes <strong>Dave Simpson</strong>
[xrr rating=3.75/5]English Oceans is the third in a series of Drive-by Truckers albums that doesn’t have a lofty conceptual bent, putting more emphasis on the small characters and American novellas the Truckers seem to craft so easily.
If English Oceans is the Drive-By Truckers finest album since 2004’s The Dirty South - and I’d argue that it is - I doubt it was intentional.