Consumer Guide Album

Drive-By Truckers: Live From Austin TX [New West, 2009]
A consistently listenable document of a documentably titanic live band. The only hedge is that it's front-loaded with most of the same songs that lead the band's greatest album, not that I ever mind hearing them again. Second half is a generous assortment that revs up the signature "Puttin' People on the Moon" with roughed-up Hood and Cooley solos, improves on the Cooley highlight from their weakest album, and updates Hood's deathless set piece "18 Wheels of Love" to bring the miracle into the present time--and also, you'll hope, the future. B+