Truckin'

The Singles Jukebox takes off after the Drive-By Truckers "Birthday Boy," a Mike Cooley song that suffers from overproduction and a lack of the humor that shone through his contributions to Brighter Than Creations Dark. I'll go along with the group's rating of 6 out of 10.

Chuck Eddy: Probably the second most boogiefied groove on the new album (after “Get Downtown,” another Mike Cooley number), which isn’t saying much even if The Big To-Do is their best in seven years (which I’m leaning toward thinking it is, despite still suffering from their “We’ve decided ‘rock’ means Crazy Horse not Skynyrd” problem.) It’s also the second DBTs album in a row with a bummed-out Cooley song about a birthday on it. And this is a great song — best part is when the whore figures out the birthday boy is single with a girlfriend, and the logic she uses. Problem is, you have to strain to hear that line and all the rest, because the singing, like the choogling, is self-defeatingly buried beneath reams of murk for no reason. Maybe it’s supposed to sound Stonesy –you know, circa Exile On Main Street or whatever. But that still doesn’t make it rock.
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