Drive-By Truckers – Go-Go Boots – Play It Again Sam -??? - ****

Go-Go Boots, assembled from the same sessions as last year's plaudit-plastered The Big To-Do, ditches scuffed roots rock for smooth country soul, perhaps reflecting Patterson Hood's father David's membership of the legendary Muscle Shoals Swampers.
The album as whole finds the band's downbeat narratives gaining extra resonance, pitched over uncharacteristically clean grooves like the twitchy hick funk of Used To Be A Cop or the slow burning build of The Fireplace Poker.
Meanwhile, I Do Believe shows that a streamlined and simplified Truckers might have enjoyed Kings Of Leon's par can illumined success.
The stadium's loss is our gain.

(13/2/11)