As the record spins up you hear this charming hybrid of Neil Young and Mountain Goats' John Darnielle. The vocal sound strikes you first, and onward to the musical headlong churn, to the combination of large-scale protest and small-scale personal desperation. There's real magic for a few tracks there, as the dawn breaks on America, helpless and hopeful and desolate and dying.
But then some energy's lost, some paucity of ideas is revealed, and the intimate edge falls off, and you're left chugging through another 8 or so lazy tracks, the lockstep choruses buttressed predictably by the verses' underwhelming observations, sounding like B-sides off of Neil Young's lamest swings at relevancy. The songs putt along at halfassed Americana tempos, reveal no new musical ideas, leaning on lyrics that aren't as profound as they hoped they'd be.
There's a spark here that didn't quite catch flame. Here's hoping the Truckers get angry, get weird, get a bug in 'em that inspires them to do something their heroes never would've 3/5
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