\u201cBack then we felt like we were on top of the world for the first time in our lives, but <\/i>Decoration Day is an acknowledgement of who all and what all we had lost along the way, whether it was the family farm that you gave up, or the guy who was supposed to be in your band, or the divorces. You lose a lot when you\u2019re chasing your dreams. All of that is on this record.\u201d
\u2014 Patterson Hood<\/i><\/p>\n
Two decades of hindsight make it feel like Decoration Day <\/i>was always fated to be a milestone for Drive-By Truckers. <\/p>\n
The Athens, Georgia group\u2019s 2003 release was their first to include guitarist-vocalist and future Grammy-winning solo artist Jason Isbell, who had joined up during their previous touring cycle. It featured the song \u201cHeathens,\u201d a moniker that the DBT\u2019s fan community would enthusiastically embrace for themselves. And it was the moment the always-headstrong band, having just finally gotten signed, defied their new label (Lost Highway) and refused to compromise their vision for this expansive 15-track album. <\/p>\n
Finally, it was a set of songs compelling enough to inspire co-founder-vocalist-guitarist Patterson Hood to declare it the band\u2019s masterpiece, despite there being several albums potentially in contention for that title.<\/p>\n
Regardless of what your personal favorite DBT release may be, there\u2019s no question that Decoration Day<\/i> is the sort of landmark album that deserves the deluxe edition treatment it receives here. In addition to featuring some of the finest work on record from Hood and DBT co-founder-guitarist-vocalist Mike Cooley\u2014not to mention Jason Isbell\u2019s first recorded songs\u2014The Definitive Decoration Day<\/i> offers fans a fresh mix of the entire album by the band\u2019s longtime sound guru \/ sixth Trucker David Barbe, plus the two-disc bonus of an entire June 20, 2002 hometown, small-venue acoustic show that saw the band play almost all of the new record they were still in the process of making.<\/p>\n
Decoration Day <\/i>collects a very strong, at times exceptional set of songs, as usual mostly Hood\u2019s (nine), but with essential contributions from Cooley (four) and Isbell (two). Again and again, the trio mine their own backstories and those of their friends and families to spin based-on-a-true-story myths and legends of the South they grew up in.<\/p>\n
This collection\u2019s excellent deep-dive essay by Stephen Deusner reveals, among other things, that Hood viewed \u201cThe Deeper In\u201d as the new album\u2019s opening track from the day he composed it. It\u2019s a Gothic \u201cripped from the headlines\u201d story about an incestuous brother-sister love affair that pushes every available emotional button right up to the final punchline, which invites you to check your biases about the South.<\/p>\n
From there you\u2019re thrown into the three-guitar maelstrom of \u201cSink Hole,\u201d a gripping narrative about losing the family farm that was inspired by both the documentary The Accountant<\/i> and Hood\u2019s own family. Then Hood\u2019s \u201cHell No, I Ain\u2019t Happy\u201d\u2014written in the middle of a months-long tour that tested the entire band\u2019s patience and endurance\u2014offers an anthem to discontent, growling, ferocious, and foreboding. <\/p>\n
Cooley takes the mic for \u201cMarry Me,\u201d a good ol\u2019 boy rocker whose lead guitar intro nods at the Eagles\u2019 \u201cAlready Gone.\u201d It\u2019s a song with some joy in it that\u2019s ultimately tragic, since the Southern character it profiles met a sad end\u2014Chris \u201cMonster\u201d Quillen, who was supposed to be a founding member of the DBT, but died in a one-car accident a couple of weeks before the band was set to record their first album. Later, Hood focuses on the circumstances of Quillen\u2019s death in the hard-charging \u201cCareless,\u201d where he contemplates how a single poor choice can change everything.<\/p>\n
In the middle third of the album, we find Isbell\u2019s first recorded song \u201cOutfit,\u201d a character study of his father and the wisdom he liked to share. It\u2019s a bit self-conscious, but beautifully crafted, the first of many portraits of troubled but striving Southern men. \u201cHeathens\u201d\u2014originally slated to be the album\u2019s title track\u2014follows, an acoustic country-rock rambler with Hood portraying a sort of archetypal Southern rascal (how\u2019s this for a classic opening couplet: \u201cSomething \u2019bout the wrinkle in your forehead \/ Tells me there’s a fit \u2019bout to get thrown.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Cooley\u2019s \u201cSounds Better In The Song\u201d is the first of a trio where he and Hood confess their failures as husbands. It\u2019s an intense acoustic workout with Cooley pleading guilty to putting his musical dreams first: \u201cI might as well of slipped that ring on your finger from a window of a van as it drove away.\u201d Hood answers with the steady-rocking yet sad \u201c(Something\u2019s Got To) Give Pretty Soon,\u201d the quiet tension in the music echoed in a well-crafted lyric: \u201cThrow it on a camel\u2019s back \/ Something\u2019s gotta give pretty soon \/ Living hard to chase the dream \/ Way beyond our ways and means.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next, the pair addresses the death by suicide of friend and former bandmate John Cahoon, bass player in Hood and Cooley\u2019s pre-DBT band Adam\u2019s House Cat. Cooley\u2019s \u201cWhen The Pin Hits The Shell\u201d is a smartly-crafted lament that doesn\u2019t mince words: \u201cIt\u2019s enough to make a man \/ Not want to be nobody\u2019s daddy \/ When all he thinks he\u2019s got left to hand down \/ Is guilt and shame.\u201d Hood\u2019s big-boned \u201cDo It Yourself\u201d is even more charged and angry: \u201cSick, tired, pissed and wired \/ You never thought about anyone else \/ You tried in vain to find somethin\u2019 to kill you \/ In the end, you had to do it yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Isbell earns the title track with a novelistic story-song fictionalizing an actual family feud his grandparents told him about. It\u2019s an incendiary mixture of loyalty and fury, leading to an epic outro where all three guitarists trade lashing solos. The album closes more quietly but no less powerfully with Cooley\u2019s \u201cLoaded Gun In The Closet,\u201d a story song full of portent that ultimately points out how viewing a relationship from the outside rarely reveals the whole truth of it.<\/p>\n
Decoration Day<\/i>\u2019s thoughtful sequencing gives it the flow and arc of a novel or play, a sort of Southern Gothic Our Town<\/i> told in songs that weave in and out of Americana, Southern Rock, country-folk and hints of punk and rhythm and blues. <\/p>\n
The two-disc bonus included in this set chronicles a well-lubricated June 2002 run-through of most of the album\u2014plus a few older favorites\u2014at the Flicker Bar in Athens. The venue was too small for amplified electric guitars, so the three guitarist-vocalists up front play acoustics while drummer Brad Morgan uses a stripped down kit and bassist Earl Hicks plugs in but adjusts to match his bandmates\u2019 volume.<\/p>\n
What the resulting acoustic versions lack in dynamics and depth of field, they make up for with intimacy, immediacy and passion. These are songs that they\u2019re still getting to know and you can feel them exploring as they play, which is exciting for both the band and its audience of hardcore hometown fans.<\/p>\n
If we\u2019re being strictly honest here, Hood\u2019s gritty vocals can be an acquired taste, Cooley\u2019s are only somewhat cleaner, and the livewire intensity of the acoustic versions on the bonus discs sometimes devolves into sloppiness. Thing is, none of that really matters. If you like Drive-By Truckers at all\u2014and I doubt you\u2019d still be reading if you didn\u2019t\u2014you need this album. It features one of the band\u2019s most impressive and affecting collections of songs buffed to a 2025 shine, plus a legendary live show, and you absolutely should not miss it.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody was on the same page, and we knew it was good. We were finally getting to do what we\u2019d wanted to do the way we wanted to do it. And there\u2019s a joy in that.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8658],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-47302","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-drive-by-truckers","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47302"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}