Drive-By Truckers

If there was ever a justification for wearing a mesh cap and beard, this album is it. Drive By Truckers make My Morning Jacket sound like Nicolette Larson's version of Neil Young's "Lotta Love." Their sixth album is heartfelt, melodic and not afraid to throw punches like the bastard sons of Crazy Horse.

Class warfare meets gangsta-rock. The imagistic density of the songs about working for a living till you die--especially Jason Isbell's poetic "The Day John Henry Died" and Patterson Hood's narrative "Puttin' People on the Moon"--makes the vicious cycle seem more inescapable; their class consciousness justifies the badass nihilism of the anti-Buford Pusser triptych like ghetto sob stories about dope lords' pain do, only without the sentimentality. Then there are the two about successful musicians. Sam Phillips was OK for a rich man, but he could only take Carl Perkins so far. And Rick Danko ends up not much better off alive than Richard Manuel is dead. (Grade - A-)