DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS - Brighter Than Creation's Dark

The music of the Drive-By Truckers remains largely the same after the departure of Jason Isbell--a proudly working-class amalgam of rock and country as inclined toward tender pedal steel elegies as rip-roaring triple guitar stomps. The musicianship and music is solid, but one can't help feeling that a lyric-writing clinic would help. When subjects get heavy, as on "Daddy Needs A Drink" or the Iraq vet ode "That Man I Shot", their words get stuck in cliche and awkward phrasing. Maybe the solution is a 40-minute album instead of an 80-minute one? There's a soild 10-song album lurking here.