Sound Salute

Best Albums

Drive-By Truckers Brighter than Creation’s Dark (2008) If you still yearn for the All-man Brothers or Amazing Rhythm Aces, or the days when Muscle Shoals in Alabama was a music powerhouse, the Truckers trace a direct line to country soul: guitarist Patterson Hood is the son of studio legend David Hood, who played bass on sessions with Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Etta James. Brighter contains my favourite song of the decade, “Checkout Time in Vegas”, a noir novel delivered in less than three minutes that begins, “A bloody nose, empty pockets, a rented car with a trunk full of guns/It ain’t true that the sun don’t rise in Vegas/I’ve seen it once.”

I have grandchildren older than Lorde, but you don’t need to the most commercially successful New Zealand album ever, it is also an artistic triumph.