JeffVrabel.com

Billboard – The Drive-By Truckers’ seventh album is a sprawling scorcher, and while these guys certainly aren’t strangers to long records, “Brighter Than Creation’s Dark” is one of the meanest, leanest 19-track albums you’ll ever spin. Yet where DBT usually hits the ground running, “Dark” is deliberately slower to burn, full of beautifully considered stories of soldiers and fathers and drinkers that call to mind nothing less than “The River.” A surprisingly prolific Mike Cooley turns in the countried-up “Bob,” “A Ghost to Most” and the rocker “Self-Destructive Zones,” all smooth-going-down shots of squinty-eyed, serrated humor, while Patterson Hood is in never-better form on “Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife” and “Monument Valley,” the record’s John Ford-quoting closer. “Dark” also benefits from the expanded roles given pedal-steel maestro John Neff and bassist Shonna Tucker, whose first DBT tracks (including the shimmering “The Purgatory Line”) channel Patty Griffin and whose harmony vocals add welcome, newfound atmosphere.

• Drive-By Truckers – Self-Destructive Zones.mp3