Drive-By Truckers @ The Liquid Room, 6 Aug
The Truckers play up to their slack-jawed stereotype, but there's much more to this lot than the typecast
The only real surprise about tonight’s show in The Liquid Room is the absence of a row of chicken wire along the front of the stage. The music was always going to be superb, there was always going to be more females onstage than off (Shona Tucker on bass providing a surprisingly forceful feminine touch to her well slapped bass) and Drive-By Truckers play up to their slack jawed, if nimble fingered, stereotype in full: bearded and suited out in their finest cowboy shirts, swigging heftily from a bottle of ol’ Jack and howling about the complications of a supposedly simple family, daddy needing a drink and how, last night, they slept with their boots on again. But there’s much more to this band than the typecast. It’s musicianship at its finest and the Southern Rock Opera the ‘Truckers promised us in 2001 is delivered in emphatic, Alabama ass whuppin’ style. [Finbarr Bermingham]