Drive-By Truckers - English Oceans (2014) [FLAC]

Drive-By Truckers - English Oceans (2014) [FLAC]

Genre: Pop/Rock
Styles: Alternative Country, Southern Rock
Source: CD (log)
Codec: FLAC
Bitrate: ~ 1,000 kbps
Bit Depth: 16
Sample Rate: 44.1 KHz

01 Shit Shots Count
02 When He's Gone
03 Primer Coat
04 Pauline Hawkins
05 Made Up English Oceans
06 The Part of Him
07 Hearing Jimmy Loud
08 Til He's Dead Or Rises
09 Hanging On
10 Natural Light
11 When Walter Went Crazy
12 First Air of Autumn
13 Grand Canyon

For years, Mike Cooley has been the George Harrison of the Drive-By Truckers, the guy who contributed two or three fine songs to each DBTs album while frontman Patterson Hood penned the bulk of the band's repertoire. That changes with English Oceans, the band's tenth studio album, where Cooley gets co-star status for a change -- he penned six of the album's 13 tunes, and sings lead on Hood's "Til He's Dead or Rises." By accident or design, the increased presence of Cooley's songs gives English Oceans a feel of call and response, as Cooley's smart but plainspoken style faces off against Hood's more artful approach as they both spin tales of characters struggling to make sense of the world around them. While the album opens with a world-class rocker, Cooley's "Shit Shots Count," which could pass for a Dixie-fried outtake from Exile on Main St., for the most part English Oceans finds the Truckers in a thoughtful, low-key mood, with the guitar firepower dialed back a bit and both writers imagining characters whose lives range from the poignant ("Primer Coat," "When He's Gone") to the bitter ("The Part of Him") to the tragic ("Made Up English Oceans," "When Walter Went Crazy").