Search - Drive By Truckers :: Gangstabilly

An Auspicious Debut

James F. Colobus | Pittsburgh, PA United States | 08/24/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I became a Drive By Truckers fan about 6 months ago when I acquired Southern Rock Opera and was instantly transported back to the York Terrace of the late 70s and early 80s ("when dinosaurs still roamed the earth"). In case you aren't familiar with it, York Terrace is (or at least was) a working class neighborhood in a town (which shall remain anonymous) in southeastern Virginia. While much of SRO is based on events that took place in the Deep South, it does a remarkable job of conjuring up the essence of life in the Terrace two decades ago as well. Lyrically and musically SRO is a masterpiece that I simply cannot recommend highly enough - particularly to anyone who came of age in the South of the 70s and 80s.It was therefore with considerable excitement that a few months after acquiring SRO, I began to explore the Drive By Truckers' hard-to-find back catalogue. I just had to know whether the DBT had always been so good or whether SRO was the product of a gradual ascent to greatness. After a few listens to their debut album, Gangstabilly, I had my initially somewhat disappointing answer - the DBT simply did not start out with the consistent songwriting skills they would later display on SRO. Still, Gangstabilly is by no means a bad album. To the contrary, most of the songs on it are quite good and several are exceptional. The opening cut, 'Wife Beater', pulls you in immediately with its southern gospel-inflected chorus, 'don't go back to him, he's a wife beater'. 'The Living Bubba' is an arresting up-tempo ballad that tells the tale of a musician with AIDS that will be painful to listen to for anyone who has lost someone close to them to that awful disease. 'Demonic Possession' is an upbeat number which features some mighty fine guitar pickin' and will at the very minimum have you gleefully stomping your feet, and might even get you dancing around the room if you are prone to such displays. 'Steve McQueen' is a catchy homage to the action movie star of the same name and will have you singing along in no time. 'Panties in Your Purse' is yet another wonderful DBT song that sounds like it was inspired by events that went down in the Terrace back in the day. So, don't let anyone tell you Gangstabilly isn't worth owning. This is a fine album - just don't expect the songs to be as consistently good and flow together as seamlessly as they do on SRO. Of course, if you or I only listened to albums as good as SRO, we'd have mighty small album collections, wouldn't we? So, do the searching you need to do to get your hands on Gangstabilly and enjoy it for what it is - a fine debut from a band that would soon become even better."

Nice Tunes and Some Noisy Rockin' Ones

Jesse Trent | Chesterton, IN | 05/31/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"You can almost divide this album up into jangly and rockin' tunes. I was really surprised by this album when I got it. Pleasantly. "The Tough Sale" sort of reminds me of U2's "Bullet the Blue Sky." Not that it sounds like it or anything, but just sort of how the story is laid out. At first, that song was sort of annoying, but it kept drawing me in. I think the lyrics are pure poetry.



A lot of songs on this album hit me right in the gut. "The Living Bubba" is a true story about a musician friend of Patterson's who had AIDS but nevertheless continued on playing shows and not giving up on living. Cooley's "Panties in Your Purse" is another song that is put together lyricly well.



The second side is more rocking, but it is also kind of jarring to me. I don't know if there wasn't just another album they could have saved these for, or what. But "Steve McQueen" and "Buttholeville" just don't do it for me musically like "Sandwiches for the Road" does. "Sandwiches" is the final track on the CD, and it leaves the listener with the simple message, "Nothing can hurt you but yourself." And what a fantastic gem of country-rock Zen it is.

"

Authentic Southern Music for Modern Times

Music Fan | Mountain View, Arkansas | 02/24/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The recording and the band on this CD are not so well polished and the line-up is not the same as the current DBT, but this is an excellent piece of work. The pedal-steel player (no longer with the band) does a great job and provides a flavor missing from the band's most recent efforts. There is a sense of spontaneity in this live-in-the-studio performance. The songs are well crafted, provocative and entertaining. The entire package strikes me as very genuine. These guys represent a substantial segment of the modern South, without affectation or posing. The rough edges of the production work well with the content of the text and the timbre of the tunes. This is one very fine CD."