Most Popular
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The Talk of the Green Iguana
Will American voters elect the first gay vice president in November?
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Are We There Yet?
Jeez, can we just embrace the electric car already?
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The Muscle Men
Inside the "Rejuvenation Centers" at the heart of the nation's largest illegal steroid and HGH operation
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Accidental Hit Man
Sure, Paul Brandreth talks like a wiseguy. But is he a cold-blooded killer?
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They'll Take Your Houses
South Florida's real estate forecast calls for pain
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Man-Child in the Promised Land (11)
Pop star Sean Kingston hopes the party's just begun
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Your Mom Thinks He’s Hot (6)
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The Talk of the Green Iguana (4)
Will American voters elect the first gay vice president in November?
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Shooting the Moon (2)
Aim high or aim low, you're bound to hit something, even if it's the sleep button
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Incredible Turnout (2)
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Cheat Sheet to Langerado
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Paul Potts
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Licensed to Chill
How the Beasties went from hip-hop pranksters to musical renaissance men
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Not Your Father's N Word
Eight months after its "burial," the world's most dangerous epithet is more popular than ever in hip-hop
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Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
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Rejected!
12:56PM 03/18/08 -
Palm Beach Post Cuts Coffee, Pages
11:56AM 03/17/08 -
America's Economy Is A Sinking Cesspool
09:41PM 03/16/08 -
Last Bit of SXSW Wrap-Up (2/3): Black Keys, Torche, Ash Grunwald, Working For a Nuclear Free City, Dirty Novels, and more
05:49AM 03/18/08 -
Last Bit of SXSW Wrap-Up (1/3): Napalm Death, Motörhead, Tigercity, the Noisettes, Jens Lekman, Dizzee Rascal, and more
04:22AM 03/18/08 -
Stream Flo Rida's album, out tomorrow
12:19PM 03/17/08
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Recent Articles By Chris Parker
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Symphony of the Global South
Fusion rockers Ozomatli represent the sounds of L.A. and beyond
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A Pinch of Payback
Another payola settlement promises us better, braver radio. Let's not get too excited just yet.
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The Price of Victory
Hawthorne Heights faces the mother of all label fights.
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Footloose and Vowel-Free
MxPx
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Katharine Whalen
Dirty Little Secret (M.C.)
National Features
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Phoenix New Times
Canine Crusaders
That drug-sniffing dog up ahead? He may not be your best friend.
By Ray Stern -
Miami New Times
Picked On
Farm workers earn nada in America's green-bean capital.
By Janine Zeitlin -
Village Voice
"Why I'm No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal"
An election-season essay from one of America's greatest playwrights.
By David Mamet
Subject(s): Drive-by Truckers
Drive-by Truckers' songwriting trio — Mike Cooley, Jason Isbell, and Patterson Hood — have already established themselves as one of the best rock acts of the past half decade. Picking a favorite from their last three albums — 2001's Southern Rock Opera, 2003's Decoration Day, and 2004's Dirty South — is a fool's errand, yet A Blessing and a Curse may prove their most enduring.
Not as yoked to the Southern-fried, country-rock sound they built, the stylistic stretching is accompanied by several gut-wrenching paeans that stand among the best in their catalog. Cooley threatens to steal the show with "Gravity's Gone." "Cocaine rich comes quick, and that's why the small dicks have it all," he observes in the song, advising, "Don't ever let them make you feel like saying what you want is unbecoming/If you were supposed to watch your mouth all the time, I doubt your eyes would be above it." Isbell's "Daylight" is the album's biggest reach, an unabashed pop ballad, with a whiff of the '80s in the B-3 organs, but coming on the heels of Hood's downbeat ode to a friendship beyond repair, "Goodbye," the hopeful "Daylight" shines bright. Indeed, there is a current moving through the album, and it's not the rushing rapids of prior releases (aside from their spot-on Stones nod, "Aftermath USA"). It's subtle and insistent, full of bittersweet moments and eventual acceptance, epitomized by Hood's album-closing classic, "A World of Hurt." With a tears-in-your-beer lope, Hood embraces the maxim "to love is to feel pain." It's haunting and irresistible.
