Here are some Truckers opinions:
-The RSD “bootleg” from last year is the best live DBT release I’ve encountered, by a significant margin.
-I admit that I haven’t spent a lot of time with the pre-Southern Rock Opera records, but setting those aside: Dirty South is their best album. Unraveling is the worst. English Oceans is underrated.
-For my money, Cooley is one of the best songwriters out there and it’s a shame that he’s been largely absent from the last two records. I love pretty much every Cooley song from English Oceans through Unraveling; “Once They Banned Imagine” in particular is an all-time favorite of mine. He has a wonderful ability to write songs from the perspective of various kinds of racists, fascists, (kinky) hypocrites and other assorted scumbags that somehow approach them with empathy while also skewering them mercilessly. I don’t think I really understood him until “Surrender Under Protest”; that song sort of unlocked Cooley for me.
-It seems like this moment has been inspiring to Hood in a way that it hasn’t for Cooley; I don’t have a great theory on why that is at the moment. I can’t remember where or when, but I once read a review that said something like: Patterson Hood writes made-up stories about real people; Mike Cooley writes true stories about made-up people (which explains why “Sarah’s Flame” is the weakest late-period Cooley song). I personally don’t care for Hood’s very literal recent songs; while I share his politics to a very large degree, I think the songs themselves have come across as pretty ham-handed. Give me a “Sun Don’t Shine” or “Sea Island Lonely” over a “What It Means” or “Orange Clouds”.