Mike Cooley - so named because he 'might cool be'.

Here's the thing about the Drive-By Truckers: either you like them, or suddenly I don't like you. I don't get that way about many bands (Sleater-Kinney, I suppose – and also, don't presume that I don't find plenty of other reasons to dislike people: their stubborn refusal to desist is enough to put me off them for a few centuries) but I feel the Truckers have earned my loyalty. How? By being this thing: better than all of your favourite bands. Now, that's not to say that I don't have the critical distance to acknowledge that last year's The Big To-Do had its problems. For one thing, the guitars sounded cold and harsh, like a Russian housewife, and for another thing, it only really had one cast-iron classic in the devilishly good Birthday Boy.

So armed with the knowledge that Go Go Boots was borne of the same sessions, more or less, as that album, I was worried that I'd have similar problems with this record - or worse, that they spread out the good tracks across two albums that didn't hold up seperately (and it's not hard to imagine that scenario, if you use your illusions.) Luckily, that's not the case. Or, in fact, anything resembling the case. It doesn't come with any of The Big To-Do's baggage. None of that carry on. I checked. They definitely deserve your customs. (Okay, I'm done.)

So, the good news: Go Go Boots is probably the most solid set of songs they've collected since 2004's The Dirty South. It starts strong with the upbeat I Do Believe, which Patterson Hood describes as "a tale of a little boy's love for his grandmother", and closes with Mercy Buckets, which is as stirring a declaration of devotion as you'll hear ("When you just need a place to hide out for a while, I'll help you hide the bodies in a little while/I will bring you buckets of mercy.")

Shonna Tucker: once accused of having a face like a potato.

But in between those bookends, Hood's contributions get pretty dark. No song that starts with the line "The reverend had his wife done in by a guy I knew in high school" is going to be uplifting, and The Fireplace Poker is indeed a brutally direct narrative of a small-town murder - a story told from another perspective in the simmering title track, wherein John Neff lays down some slide guitar so sleazy and gritty it could almost tell the story by itself. Meanwhile, Used To Be A Cop and Ray's Automatic Weapon tell two very different stories of men haunted by their past - the former, a lawman kicked off the force and reduced to stalking his ex-wife, the latter based on the true story of two war vets and a gun.

Mike Cooley, on the other hand, delivers some classicist country music littered with keenly observed details and sterling oneliners ("I'm not good with numbers, I just count on knowing when I'm high enough") that brings some needed levity to proceedings. (Hood's record label kiss-off Assholes was probably supposed to do something similar, but it's a poorly judged effort - the only misfire on the album.)

Dominating the album is the lingering presence of little-known soul singer Eddie Hinton. The band covers a brace of his songs, both of which are album standouts: Shonna Tucker's yearning vocals on Where's Eddie are a thing to behold, while on Everybody Needs Love, Hood shines a small spotlight on a pop megahit that never was. But more than that, the vibe of the record veers more than ever towards the weird crossroads between rock, soul and country that Hood's father popularised in the glory days of Muscle Shoals music.

Go Go Gadget Joke Inserter!

PERSON X: "I prefer being single."

PERSON Y: "I prefer being album myself."

Al Byrne