On Decoration Day, the Drive-By Truckers have pulled off that precise mood. With all its pedal steel and lyrics about "Momma," it's hard to imagine this record being made anywhere else but nowhere: Drums beat out rhythms as sturdy as train tracks while bass guitars lope along like line dancers; shiny guitars jump rope with drawl-inflected vocals that sound straight out of the sticks; harmonies waft like clothesline laundry; Frigidaires, Mustangs, and Jesus are mentioned. As the record's five-man musical missives give way to solo acoustic confessionals, its consistent bucolic ethos remains as comforting as a pair of decade-old overalls.
The album seems to take off about four songs in (fittingly enough, with the very Stonesy "Marry Me"), which makes it seem less like a Drive-By and more like a crawl. However, once it hits, Decoration Day is a record that sounds like a wooden house in Kansas, like the echo of a snare drum pinging off dried fallen pines, like Jagger and Richards on moonshine. And that makes for some mansion-basement stuff indeed.
