The Road

The Road is as bleak and desperate as advertised. I can see how some people might find it incredibly depressing, although I didn't. The movie takes place in the future, after an apocalypse has utterly destroyed the United States, and possibly the rest of the Earth. The sky is grey, the weather is cold, all plant life is dead, and trees are lifeless husks. Frequent earthquakes bring entire sections of these dead forests down at a time. The film never says specifically what happened, but in flashback, the movie shows a man (Viggo Mortensen) awakened in the middle of the night in his rural house by a series of loud booms. As he goes to the window to look, all we see is flickering orange light reflected through the curtains.

As the movie opens, we see the man traveling along a deserted road with his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), pushing a shopping cart containing all of their possessions. No plants means no food, so many of the people that are left alive have taken to traveling in packs. Some of these people have become cannibals, as it's actually easier to eat other people than it is to scavenge for food. The man and his son (no names are ever given) run into one of these packs early in the film, illustrating how high the stakes are. As the pair flee into the woods, the man pulls out a gun, revealing that it only contains two bullets. The bullets are not intended for protection, but for the two of them, should their situation become that bad. The pair run into several dangerous situations like this as they travel south, continually heading for the coast, hoping to find something there. But it's not all completely bleak. There are small scenes of hope, as when the two find a house in relatively good condition. Or when the man discovers an unopened can of Coke and gives it to his son, who was born after the apocalypse and has never tasted a soft drink.

Mortensen is excellent as usual here. He absolutely inhabits the role of the man, whose entire world has been reduced to caring for his son. For him, virtually no one else can be trusted. Fear and desperation have left him believing that he and his son are the only "good guys" left, despite teaching his son otherwise. This suspicion leads him to do things that his son recognizes as wrong, and that push and pull drives a lot of the film's second half. Smit-McPhee is good as the son, but he can't quite match up to Viggo. He comes off as a whiny wimp, but that ends up being believable as well. The man spends so much of his time trying to protect his son that he hasn't spent any time teaching the poor kid to be self-reliant.

John Hillcoat directs the movie with a steady, measured hand. The film has a handful of gruesome scenes, but Hillcoat doesn't feel the need to linger on the carnage. The point of the story is the relationship between the father and son and not necessarily the horrible things they experience. Despite the grim future ahead for the lingering humans trying to survive in a dying world, the movie ends on a note of hope for the main characters. It may not have left me particularly happy, but it at least left me satisfied. 4/5

Neko Case w/Deer Tick, Sunday, November 22, Houston, TX@ Warehouse Live

I arrived at Warehouse Live partway through Deer Tick's set to a half-full room. Deer Tick was decent. They played indie-tinged country rock and were quite listenable, but none of their songs really stood out or stuck with me. By the time Neko and her band got onstage, the venue was much closer to full. It was a strong crowd for a Sunday night, and an excited one, too.

The band got up onstage and immediately ran into some sort of technical problem getting started, so Case's backup singer Kelly Hogan killed time by rambling on the microphone while the band got it worked out. Hogan has a lot of fun up there, even though she mostly talks about how mundane her life as part of a rock band is. For example- "Hmm, what did I do today? Well, not much. I packed my suitcase because our tour is finally coming to an end soon. We've been on the road since January 15." But her self-deprecating attitude and easygoing banter with Case makes it entertaining. Once the show really got going, the set was a mixture of songs from this year's Middle Cyclone and her previous album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. The band also threw in a couple of older songs, including a great performance of "Deep Red Bells" and the title track from Case's live album The Tigers Have Spoken.

Some of the highlights included Middle Cyclone's two singles, the catchy "People Got a Lotta Nerve" and the intense "This Tornado Loves You." The band also played several covers, doing the Harry Nilsson song "Don't Forget Me." This wistful tune about a broken relationship was described by Kelly Hogan as "hilarious", which seemed like a bizarre take on the song. The encore included the upbeat Shangri Las song "Train From Kansas City", one of the most positive in the band's repertoire. Most of the rest of the night was filled with the aching melancholy and dark stories of Case's own songwriting. The onstage banter, usually initiated by Hogan, serves to temper that generally dark mood. Case got in on the joking around when she was thanking Deer Tick for opening. She talked about how they were full of energy and said they usually played a second show on their own later on after her concerts ended. Then she remarked that "It would be awesome to be 22, letting my boner guide me around everywhere." Which led to a couple minutes of discussion about boners between her and Hogan. The better story, though, was when Neko discussed how Kelly bought a gigantic bag of Red Vines the other day and how she (Neko) couldn't resist them. And then she ended up with a headache, a Red Vines hangover, for most of the next day.

Still, Case's songwriting has matured to the point where she seems to know exactly how to write for her own voice. And her powerful, smoky singing is best served with a bit of melancholy or gothic, non-twangy country. In among great renditions of Fox Confessor songs like "That Teenage Feeling", "Hold On Hold On", and "Margaret vs. Pauline", a song like "Prison Girls" stands out because it's so, so creepy. Possibly the darkest-sounding song she's written so far, the live performance came close to giving me chills. Best of all, the audience was into the show. Not screaming teenagers into it, but attentive and very quiet during the songs. Except for that small group of dickheads just to the stage right of the center, back by the steps. They were talking loudly early on and I had to move to keep myself from getting into a confrontation. It's even more annoying when the rest of the audience is so well-behaved. I also really appreciated the reasonable volume that her band used, because I was able to listen without earplugs. This is important at a venue like Warehouse Live, where the sound tends to drift up into the rafters instead of out into the crowd. Even though Case played for maybe 75 minutes total, it felt like a full, robust show. This is the first time I've seen her play her own material at a headlining concert, and I can attest that her stuff works much better in a club at night than in the middle of the afternoon at the Austin City Limits Festival.

I have to admit to not watching all that many videos this past year, but these are all very, very cool. This was sort of a thrown-together top 5 for the PopMatters' year-end music video piece. But once again, it looks like they didn't get all that many submissions because my list popped up as part of the daily Mixed Media section on the site.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/117208-best-music-videos-of-2009-chris-conaton/

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox is writer/director Wes Anderson’s first animated movie. And, for the first time, it allows him to apply his idiosyncrasies to a story completely removed from any real-world situation. For all his considerable talent, Anderson’s previous films can just as easily seem cloying and off-putting as they can be charming. By putting his oddball style into a stop-motion universe featuring talking animals and evil farmers, all of Anderson’s quirks suddenly make sense. In particular, his penchant for out-of-date clothing works much better with the animals than it does on actors. It also doesn’t hurt to have a typically weird Roald Dahl story as source material.

Anderson’s version of Dahl’s story goes like this: Mr. Fox (George Clooney) has given up his longtime occupation as a henhouse raider and become a newspaper columnist in deference to his wife’s (Meryl Streep) desire to raise a family. Their son Ash (Jason Schwartzmann) is an awkward misfit with a predilection for wearing a cape and no discernible skills. Ash’s cousin Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson), a natural athlete, moves in with the family shortly after they buy a new house inside of a large tree. This tree happens to sit in sight of the valley’s three biggest farms. The farms are owned by Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, who didn’t get to be so successful by being nice guys. The temptation and the prospective challenge prove to be too much for Mr. Fox, who can’t resist making “one last run” (in three parts) to steal from each of the farmers.

The run is a success, but Mr. Fox’s triumph is short-lived because he’s essentially declared war on the three farmers. They respond by trying to kill him and by bringing in bulldozers to destroy his tree. This puts Fox, his family, and the entire wild animal population of the valley on the defensive in the movie’s second half. So Mr. Fox has to get creative and figure out a way out of the situation he created.

Wes Anderson’s stubborn desire to do things his own way pays off big-time in the visual look of the film. The use of real fur on the animals makes more some herky-jerky discontinuity between frames, but it also gives the movie a lived-in, tactile feel. The rest of the look of the movie is similarly low-fi, giving the whole production the appearance of a pop-up book come to life. The dialogue is typical for an Anderson movie, wry and exasperated in equal measure. But the stakes for the characters are much higher here, survival and vs. livelihood. Anderson’s fondness for family dysfunction still makes an appearance, though, as Mr. Fox has to figure out how to relate to Ash while Ash has to deal with Kristofferson’s excellence at seemingly everything.

Despite my initial misgivings, George Clooney turns out to be perfect in the title role. Meryl Streep is tough yet tender as Mrs. Fox, while Jason Schwartzman’s mumbling, perpetually aggravated delivery makes Ash very, very funny. Bill Murray gets a handful of great scenes as Badger, and Wally Wolodarsky shines as the not-quite-all-there Kylie. The film’s general oddness and plot points revolving around stealing and alcoholic cider may make it seem a bit inappropriate for children. But this is exactly the kind of movie that kids who haven’t been raised on an endless diet of Dreamworks animation will end up loving. It’s fresh and creative and inventive, and most of all, Fantastic Mr. Fox is flat-out fun. 4.5/5

After six episodes, I decided I couldn't take it anymore. Here's why:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/116744-why-i-gave-up-on-glee/

The Men Who Stare at Goats

With all the problems that plague movie trailers, sometimes we need to give credit where credit is due. The folks who cut the trailer for The Men Who Stare at Goats did an awesome job. It was a collection of hilarious non-sequiturs that made the movie look like a bizarre and fun story with an unhinged George Clooney, a hippie Jeff Bridges, and an evil Kevin Spacey. Unfortunately, when all of that is put into context, the movie doesn't hold up quite so well. This is director Grant Heslov's first major film, and he doesn't seem to know quite what to do with the material. The story is amusing, but it still wants to have a dramatic arc. At the points where he wants us to take the movie seriously, the film slows down to the point of almost standing still. It's only really entertaining when it's being funny. The result of these directorial choices means that we get bored with the overall story and don't really care about the plot, which keeps us from being invested in the characters.

Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton, a reporter from Ann Arbor who stumbles upon a story involving a program that the U.S. Army ran in the early 80's to develop psychic "Super Soldiers." Bob doesn't take his first interview subject, Gus Lacey (Stephen Root, awesome as usual), seriously, but when he runs into one of the people Lacey name-checked in his interview, he leaps at the opportunity to get to know him. That man is Lyn Cassaday (George Clooney) and he reveals to Bob that he's been reactivated and is on a secret mission into Iraq. The year is 2003 and the two men run into each other in Kuwait City. Bob is desperate to get into Iraq and cover something, anything involving the war, so he tags along with Lyn into the desert. Along the way, Lyn gradually relates the story of how the Super Soldier program got started and, eventually, got shut down.

Whenever the movie goes into flashback mode, things pick up. Jeff Bridges plays Bill Django, the commander of the program who is all about creating an "Army of Peace." The combination of hippie philosophy, military setting, and attempted use of psychic powers is a winning one. Bridges is very funny, as is Kevin Spacey (despite his role being reduced to a glorified cameo) when he shows up in the flashbacks about midway through the movie. These scenes as a whole, while not quite hilarious, are at least a lot of fun. But Bob and Lyn's desert adventure isn't nearly as compelling, and the big finale which brings it all together feels forced. It is nice to see Clooney playing a character that isn't suave for a change. Lyn is still confident, but it's also quite possible that he's downright crazy. McGregor, on the other hand, isn't given much to do as the straight man. It also seems odd that they hired a British actor to play an American reporter, considering that the author/reporter of the original book is British himself. It's a strange script choice that feels specifically targeted at making the movie an easier sell to middle America, and I'm not sure it works.

In the end, The Men Who Stare at Goats is a movie that feels like a missed opportunity more than anything else. It doesn't know what its best features are, even though the people who cut the trailer seem to have figured it out perfectly. Bridges and Clooney are a lot of fun, but the rest of the movie seems to sag around them most of the time. It's cute and diverting but it could've been a lot more. 2.5/5

Red Cliff

John Woo spent a decade in Hong Kong making classic action movies before heading to Hollywood in the mid-90's. Once there, he made one film that lived up to his action pedigree, 1997's Face/Off. Then he descended into self-parody with Mission Impossible: II and a series of mediocre to bad Hollywood flicks. So when I heard that he was finally returning to China to make the historical battle epic Red Cliff, my expectations were high. When I found out that the original 4.5 hour movie was being cut to 2.5 hours for its North American release, I was a bit disappointed. But even this edited edition was well worth watching in the theater for its epic scope.

The plot involves the ambitious General Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang), fresh off of victories in northern China, badgering the Emperor into letting him go south to attack two holdout territories. The holdouts, Liu Bei (Chen Chang) and Sun Quan (Yong You), have very different personalities, but after Liu Bei loses badly to Cao Cao early on, he presses for an alliance. Liu sends his chief strategist, Kong Ming (Takeshi Kaneshiro) in advance to make the arrangements. After securing the alliance Kong Ming stays on, making friends with Zhou You (Tony Leung), Sun Quan's top commander. Cao Cao soon shows up to attack Zhou's fortress at Red Cliff, on the south side of the Yangtze River. He bring 800,000 troops along and thousands of ships, setting up an enormous camp on the river's north bank.

The bulk of the movie is concerned with the planning and strategy of the two sides as Kong Ming and Zhou You scheme and plot to find advantages against Cao Cao despite being heavily outnumbered. It's clear, even from the early scenes in the movie, that filming in China had a very positive effect on John Woo. The action sequences in Red Cliff are astonishing, from complex battles using elaborate formations to a scene where thousands of arrows fly into straw-laden ships to the final, climactic battle that takes up most of the movie's final act. Woo still relies a little too much on some of his trademark obsessions (hello, doves), but without any gunplay to fall back on, he is forced to be more creative. And that creativity works. There have been a lot of action movies set in ancient China over the past 10 years or so, but Woo's style here is a bit more gritty than most of those. He eschews dance-like fight choreography in favor of a more grounded style, and it serves to set the film apart.

The acting here is good, too. As Zhou You, Tony Leung brings his movie-star charisma to yet another impressive performance, while Takeshi Kaneshiro matches him scene for scene as the endlessly clever Kong Ming. Fengyi Zhang is imposing, yet vulnerable as Cao Cao, and his desire for Xiao Qiao (You's wife) gives his character more depth beyond simple ambition. Chiling Lin has a relatively small part as Xiao Qiao, but she makes the most of her limited screen time, as her character plays a pivotal role in the final battle. Even without knowing exactly what was cut, it's able to see that certain, more character-based subplots were given short shrift in the North American version. But the important moments all come through. We get to know each of the major characters, and the major plot points and epic action scenes remain intact. This is a spectacle that deserves to be seen in a theater. 4.5/5

Pirate Radio

Writer Richard Curtis (Notting Hill, Bridget Jones' Diary) proved that he could handle a large ensemble cast with his directorial debut, Love Actually, back in 2003. It's taken him six years to climb back into the director's chair, but The Boat That Rocked- err, Pirate Radio (the title was changed in the movie's delayed, difficult journey to North American screens), proves that that film was no fluke. This is a movie that has a lot of characters, but Curtis finds ways to give nearly all of them time to shine. This is a positive thing, since entertaining characters are really almost all that Pirate Radio has going for it.

The film has the barest skeleton of a plot. It's 1966, and BBC Radio won't play even an hour of rock a day, despite bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, and The Kinks being hugely popular. So pirate radio stations operate in a grey area of the law, broadcasting from boats that are anchored miles off of the coast in international waters. The movie focuses on the Radio Rock boat, with its collection of wild and wacky DJs. Meanwhile, the government, represented by the overly stuck-up, officious Alister Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh, going over the top yet somehow being completely believable), is working on a way to shut down the stations at sea. Ostensibly the story is about Carl, a young man sent to live and work on the boat by his mother after he gets kicked out of school. Carl does get to come of age, but he doesn't really learn a lot of valuable lessons. Mostly the movie is a series of loosely connected scenes about the DJs on the boat.

Curtis knows what he's doing when it comes to colorful characters, though. Pirate Radio is populated with quality character actors that know how to get a laugh. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays The Count, an American DJ who's the most popular jock on the boat. Bill Nighy plays the flamboyant station manager and Carl's godfather. Rhys Ifans shows up partway through as Gavin, a formerly popular DJ just back from America. He and the Count become instant rivals. There's also Nick Frost and Rhys Darby (Murray from Flight of the Conchords) as other eccentric DJs on the boat. Curtis does come up with a lot of fun things for all these guys to do. There's the moments when Dave (Frost) tries to get Carl laid. There's a great scene where The Count and Gavin's rivalry comes to a head in a game of chicken that involves climbing the mast of the ship. There's a bit where the boat meets Bob (Ralph Brown), the little-seen overnight DJ who has actually been on the boat for six months. It's really all a lot of fun.

But Curtis doesn't seem to have any idea about how to end this easygoing comedy. Once the British government finds a way to shut the stations down, the movie goes on for what seems like another half-hour. A completely unnecessary half-hour, too, as Curtis blows by the film's most emotional, profound moment in favor of an action-packed ending. And I'm gonna have to go into SPOILER territory to talk about this, so let me just register my rating here so that you can leave if you need to. 3/5



On the deck of the boat, Carl has a quiet conversation with The Count in which he tells Carl that he's come to a sad revelation. A few months before, he realized that he is living the best days of his life, right there on the boat. It's a terrible thing, he says, to realize that nothing for the rest of your life is going to top what you're going through right then. It's a wonderful scene that comes right near what should be the end of the movie. Instead, Curtis tacks on a weird plot extension that finds the boat pulling up anchor, hiting something, and beginning to sink. So we get to watch 20 minutes of dramatic action where the cast tries to escape from the sinking boat. It doesn't exactly ruin the movie, but it feels very out of place to try to wring serious action-drama out of what had, until that point, been a light-hearted comedy.

Wow, it's been a long time since I had a new movie review! There was a three-week gap at the end of October where I actually saw no movies at all, but that's been remedied by the three I saw in the past week. So this one should get me back in the swing of things.


2012

Roland Emmerich is by now famous (or infamous) for destruction in his movies. After Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow, he definitely deserves his reputation. But after seeing 2012, I honestly have no idea where he can go from here beyond actually exploding the planet. Because this movie takes care of pretty much every disaster idea left in the book. Massive, continent-destroying earthquakes, tsunamis that wipe out whole countries, oh, and Yellowstone explodes in a supervolcano eruption that dwarfs pretty much anything else ever put to film. And it's mostly an afterthought amidst the greater destruction in the movie.

The science content in this movie is, of course, terrible and over-the-top ridiculous, but it's worth mentioning for one important point. In this movie, the right people actually listen when the scientist warns of impending doom. They don't brush him off and ignore him until it's almost too late. No, the White House chief of staff, Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), actually takes scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) seriously and warns the President (Danny Glover), who in turn gets the rest of the G8 countries on board in preparing for the disaster. Of course, since the impending calamity means the death of nearly every person on Earth, they don't bother informing the public or any other governments about it. All the better for the wanton destruction that will soon be on display.

Our hero, Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), gets wind of the coming apocalypse via Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), a whacked-out conspiracy theorist talk radio host whom he meets in Yellowstone National Park. Curtis is skeptical, but quickly starts to believe him. This leads to a last-minute rescue of his children, his ex-wife (Amanda Peet), and her new husband (Tom McCarthy). They manage to escape from the collapsing Los Angeles, first in a limousine and then in a small plane. The rest of the movie finds them improbably outrunning numerous other disasters in search of the arks that the governments have built to save whatever they can. Emmerich also makes sure to station a viewpoint character, however peripheral, at other calamities including the destruction of The Vatican, a massive mid-ocean tsunami, the destruction of the White House by an aircraft carrier borne on a giant wave, and the tsunami that wipes out all of India. If you are looking for wanton destruction, this is the movie for you.

This could all come off terribly, but Emmerich makes it work. All of the film's special effects are top-notch, for starters, which is crucial to suspension of disbelief. The cast is also solid, featuring a wave of decent actors doing good work in front of green screens. Cusack and Peet are appealing as the leads, and Chiwetel Ejiofor does typically sparkling work as the concerned scientist. Danny Glover makes for a calm, reassuring President, and Oliver Platt, in the role of "bad guy", is actually completely believable in his pragmatism in the face of the more emotional characters surrounding him. Finally, the pseudo-scientific cause- sunspots are making neutrinos start acting like microwaves and they're heating up the Earth's core amazingly fast- is vague enough that it's easy to roll with the destruction without worrying about silly things like details. This isn't a great movie by any means, but it delivers on what it promises with skill and enthusiasm. 3.5/5

The power-pop band's second album contains a couple of awesome, awesome singles (Volcano, Anna) but loses focus when they don't have a strong hook at the center of their songs.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/111447-jupiter-one-sunshower/

In which I discuss Legend of the Seeker's first season growing pains and its strong second season start.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/116074-legend-of-the-seeker-season-2-premiere/

Experimental electronic (and occasionally acoustic) music that tempers its weirdness with a strong sense of melody.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/114827-black-mold-snow-blindness-is-crystal-antz/

Hey, the guy and girl from the movie Once have a band, and they're called The Swell Season. Their new album, their second, is a worthy follow-up to all the great songs they did in the movie. Even though the two of them got together in real life and broke up in the meantime, they're still making good music together.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/115570-the-swell-season-strict-joy/

It just sounds wrong for a band to be this jaded on their first EP. What also sounds wrong is decent songwriting with no originality to be found. It's not bad, it's just the latest in a long line of forgettable indie-pop.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/114937-netherfriends-calling-you-out/

Drive-By Truckers w/Telegraph Canyon, Friday, October 30, Houston, TX@ The House of Blues

The evening started over at Cactus Records, where the Drive-By Truckers' ostensible frontman Patterson Hood was doing an in-store performance. Hood also performed a year ago when the Truckers were in town, bringing the band's drummer Brad Morgan along with him. Today he was alone, though, and his acoustic set was heavy on songs from his solo album from earlier this year, Murdering Oscar and Other Love Songs. You hate to pick on an independent record store for its sound mix, but Cactus hosts these in-stores all the time. Somehow, despite it being just Patterson and his guitar, the mix was way off in favor of the guitar. At times we could barely hear Hood's voice and it was tough to make out lyrics throughout. Still, Hood was entertaining, telling several stories about how songs came about and generally being good-natured. It was clear he really likes supporting a store like Cactus, when there are so few of them left around the country. Some of the songs he played included "Murdering Oscar", "Pollyanna", "Momma Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)", "Grandaddy", and "Back of a Bible."

Then, after a nice dinner, it was off to Houston's House of Blues for the main show. Telegraph Canyon was onstage when we arrived, a 7-piece band that sort of floats between country and psychedelic pop. They had a nice full sound and pretty solid songs, but nothing that made me go over and pick up an album. When we showed up, there was plenty of space available in the venue's raised standing-room area with many bar tables open. And yet, in keeping with the House of Blues' strategy of charging for everything possible, those tables were not available to everyday concertgoers. No, you had to pay extra for the right to sit at a bar table. Ugh. After going over to buy a $4.50 bottle of water, we were ready for DBT to take the stage.

The last time I really saw a Drive-By Truckers show, it was 2004, the band was a 5-piece, and guitarist/songwriter Jason Isbell was still in the group. The band's 2008 set at the Austin City Limits festival doesn't really count, as we sat on a blanket hundreds of yards from the stage and didn't really watch the band play much at all. Now the group has six members, with John Neff on pedal steel guitar most of the time and Jay Gonzalez on keyboards. They started out with "George Jones Talkin' Cell Phone Blues" off of The Fine Print, the band's odds-and-ends album that came out a couple months ago. It was a pretty easygoing start to the show, and Mike Cooley's poppy "Carl Perkins' Cadillac" followed soon after, giving things a laid-back vibe to start off. The set was wide-ranging, reaching as far back as "Steve McQueen" from their debut album and as recent as "Play it All Night Long", the band's Warren Zevon cover from "The Fine Print."

The hard-hitting "Sinkhole" showed up about halfway through the set and was a big-time crowd-pleaser. Other highlights included the duo of marriage songs from Decoration Day, "My Sweet Annette" and "Marry Me." Bassist Shonna Tucker's "Home Field Advantage" popped up mid-set and provided a nice change of pace from the Hood and Cooley show. The band returned for an encore with a trio of new songs from the forthcoming album The Big To-Do, and the most interesting was Tucker's song. It once again sounded quite different from the stuff Hood and Cooley have been writing for the past decade, and the band, as good as they are, sorely needs some songs at this point that break from their standard pattern. Isbell used to fill that need, and Tucker seems to be filling that hole admirably. The encore also included Southern Rock Opera's celebratory "Let There Be Rock" from Hood, as well as Cooley's "Shut Up and Get on the Plane." The show ended with the band's cover of The Jim Carroll Band's "People Who Died", back in the set after Carroll's recent death. They came back onstage for a second encore and finished with the slow-burn of "Angels and Fuselage."

As great as the Drive-By Truckers are as a live band, they seem to past their apex. John Neff is a really good guitarist, but has virtually no personality onstage. Hood, Tucker, and Cooley all play off of each other to some extent, but even when Neff is playing a regular electric guitar, he's all on his own over at stage right. Compared to their three-guitar attack of old, the band is missing something, performance-wise, with Isbell gone. Hood is still excellent as a frontman, though, and Cooley is a striking presence on stage, too. The band can still tear it up and it's great that the setlist can change drastically from night to night. The Truckers are absolutely worth seeing, but I'm happy that I got to see them twice while Jason Isbell was part of the band.