Description
The quintet’s The Dirty South, originally released in 2004 after 2002’s Southern Rock Opera and its 2003 follow-up, Decoration Day, had established the Patterson Hood/Mike Cooley/Jason Isbell led five-piece as a serious force in contemporary, swampy, red clay rocking. Originally intended to be another double disc like Southern Rock Opera, it was edited down to a single due to record company jitters about the extended length. Now, on the eve of its 20th anniversary, Drive-By Truckers revisits the collection.
They have added three excised tunes, rejigged the sequence, remastered it all, remixed some songs, fixed a few vocal inconsistences and reissued the package with a sumptuous 46 page book in this deluxe, lengthened form. It’s likely the final word on a title that was already a highlight of the group’s catalog in its earlier version. Even Hood, never known to be overly full of braggadocio, says this “director’s cut” was the way it was intended to be heard and just might be the DBT’s masterpiece.
It lives up to that assertion.
Now boasting 17 songs running nearly 90 minutes, the Dirty South summarizes the Truckers’ conceptual attitude. They continue to struggle with “the duality of the Southern thing,” shorthand for respecting where they were born and raised while confronting the area’s more conservative views.
