Drive-By Truckers

★★★★ Welcome To Club XIII ATO. CD/DL/LP

Southern rock’s premier survivors turn their dramatic past into poignant anthems. Live long enough, and you’ll have some proper stories to tell – that’s a goal, at least. Arguably America’s most dependably great rock band for the last quarter-century, Drive-By Truckers have never been short on memorable tales, with portraits rendered from assorted carousers of the American South. But after a string of timely political missives, the Truckers turn inward and backward here, transforming times they almost died, should have died, or perhaps wished they would’ve died into nine crackling odes to survival. With his trademark gothic drawl, Patterson Hood limns close highway calls with perspicacity, then mourns the compatriots he’s lost to foibles and vices alike. Perennially underrated Mike Cooley, meanwhile, hands in some of his sharpest-ever writing on Every Single Storied Flameout, like R.E.M. plus brawn, a definitive take on the (glorious) ways rock leads kids astray. Long may these Truckers roll.