Drive By Truckers can lay claim an unfortunate honour – they were the last band to play the French Quarter before Hurricane Katrina transplanted half of Lake Pontchartrain onto downtown New Orleans.
This, their fifth album, was actually recorded before the disaster. Yet its muted, regretful air feels like an appropriate elegy for a ravaged metropolis.
Apocalyptical imagery is, in fact, of the five piece’s calling cards. Songwriter Patterson Hood has a flair for cinematic angst; his lyrics-sheet swims over with sweltering evocations of steamy backwoods, broiling seas, rampaging prairie storms.
Alabama born and bred, Hood has a confident, articulate grasp of his Deep South roots and his homage to the American interior’s stark grandeur does not fall into the hillbilly pastiche typical of too many southern bands.
Hood shares something of Nick Cave’s flair for the portentous, singing in a weather-wracked croon of downtrodden Joes, the debilitating rigours of ‘rotgut moonshine’ and arid loneliness of the open road .
Sometimes, it is true, he gives the impression of being more interested in spinning bittersweet yarns than nailing a memorable melody.
But while Hood’s whisky soured arrangements occasionally drift towards the boogie-bar, his knack for heart stopping imagery makes A Blessing And A Curse worth persevering with.