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MURDERING OSCAR (AND OTHER LOVE SONGS)
Patterson Hood
Patterson Hood has the rare ability to make even the shadiest, simplest first-person character interesting if not sympathetic. That is the heart of the Drive-By Truckers, his Athens, Ga., rock band.
Hood penned the songs on this album, his second solo effort, as far back as 1991, but this release sounds like a modern Truckers album without songwriting partner Mike Cooley riding shotgun. Surprisingly, it's more consistent than the Truckers' 2008 record, "Brighter Than Creation's Dark." Piano and pedal steel envelop melodies like fog seeping into dense forest. Hood's limited vocals ooze raspy sincerity, even when lyrics sometimes feel unfinished or remedial. Despite a throwaway line about an apple ("They say one a day will keep the doctor away/and that's okay," he sings straight-faced), acoustic ditty "Granddaddy" is an endearing, fiddle-laced charmer about old age. Hood even plans to keep candy in the house so "all the little ones will come and see me."
Brilliantly, he juxtaposes that sweet image against a creep-out session called "Belvedere." Singing quietly over weeping steel and growling electric guitar, Hood confesses a dream (or nightmare?) about running away with a high school girl, "long-legged and fine." Like so many disturbing Truckers tales, this one does not end well, but it's a gripping ride.
Patterson Hood performs Thursday at the Black Cat.
-- Michael Deeds
DOWNLOAD THESE: "Heavy and Hanging," "Belvedere," "Pride of the Yankees"
TRAVELS WITH MYSELF AND ANOTHER
Future of the Left
