whoa, I'm glad I heard about this

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS , 8 pm, 5/3. The Metro.

I've loved Drive-By Truckers since I heard "Carl Perkins' Cadillac," appropriately, while driving, on WHPK. I pretty much immediately went out and bought The Dirty South, which had just come out, and not long afterward picked up Southern Rock Opera and the rest of their pre-existing catalogue. They sound like a bunch of former punk rockers, who can play really really good, drawing on the southern rock, country and power pop/bar rock canons. What really puts them up a notch for me are the lyrics. Not really for cynics, though they often tell stories about cynics, Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, Jason Isbell (when he was with the band), and now Shonna Tucker (bassist on the last few albums who has a few songs on the new one) write with such an affection for (for lack of a better word) the common (and now that I think about it, uncommon) man and woman, while keeping one eye on the dangerous, bad things in the world.
I've never seen them before (did see Patterson Hood play solo in December at the bottle) and Can. Not. Wait.
I can't describe this band without getting really cheesy (like that's a bad thing), so I'll just go full on dairy here and describe their new "Brighter Than Creation's Dark" as a series of beautiful, often painful pictures of America in 2008. A+ RECOMMEND