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Mar 4, 2014They’ve created a complex and detailed world, and English Oceans adds more memorable characters to it.
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Feb 28, 2014Comprising equal parts Stones raunch and REM-style country-rock, songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley are working at the peak of their powers.
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UncutMar 7, 2014While English Oceans carries its quota of Truckers staples, there's also much that sets this fantastic 10th studio album apart from its predecessors. [Apr 2014, p.82]
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Mar 3, 2014Dedicated to Lieske, English Oceans is a triumph for the Drive-By Truckers, one that capitalizes on Hood and Cooley’s strengths as songwriters and also gives them something to sing for that means more than all those colorful characters put together.
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Mar 31, 2014Shonna Tucker may have left the fold for a solo career, but in Hood and Cooley the Truckers still have two of the most eloquent songwriters working in Americana.
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Q MagazineMar 14, 2014They're on terrific form. [Apr 2014, p.106]
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Mar 7, 2014Hood and Mike Cooley, the only original members left, handle all of the songwriting for the first time since the band's 1998 debut, and it makes for a unity of vision that prevents the grief from sounding gratuitous, that makes the uncertainties resonate with our own.
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Mar 3, 2014Theirs is an 18-year experiment in empathy, in putting themselves in the place of Others, in trawling through the muck of human experience to find sparks of connection and compassion. English Oceans isn’t the Truckers’ best record, it’s their only record.
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Feb 28, 2014Ten albums and 18 years on from their first show, the Drive-By Truckers are still capable of mixing things up and showing off new sides of their skill set, and that's certainly the case with English Oceans, which shows them making wise use of all their talents--not just Mike Cooley.
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Feb 28, 2014Nothing here reinvents the wheel, but the band are masters of their art.
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Mar 13, 2014The geetars are as crisp as 100-dollar bills, vocals more in-your- face than a protester at the height of a rally; it’s a resounding success, at least from an artistic standpoint.
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Mar 4, 2014The results are muscular and more experimental than you might expect.
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Mar 12, 2014The group may be battling their more indulgent tendencies at times, but Drive-By Truckers always find a path back towards redemption somewhere along the line.
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Mar 4, 2014These guys clearly know their roots, and English Oceans is all about getting back to where they came from.
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Mar 4, 2014Much respect, of course, to frontman Patterson Hood, who cranks out his usual smart set of rockers as consistent as Waffle House hash browns. Cooley's burst of creativity has only made Hood better.
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Mar 3, 2014English Oceans, their 12th album in 17 years, confirms they've lost little of their potency, despite major personnel changes over the past decade.
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Mar 3, 2014English Oceans is a typically strong album from Drive-By Truckers. It doesn’t touch the band’s early 00’s run of Southern Rock Opera, Decoration Day and The Dirty South, but it’s nice to hear Cooley fully embracing his status as co-leader of the band.
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Mar 7, 2014Musical diversity doesn’t need to be the name of the game for every song. Many of these just lack the immediate oomph that makes you realize how good the words being said truly are.
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Mar 5, 2014Cooley’s superlative performance on English Oceans would be more worthy of celebration if it wasn’t negated by Hood’s most non-committal songwriting to date.
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May 1, 2014The result is a mixed bag of muscular rockers ("Shit Shots Count") and cinematic, brooding ballads ("Pauline Hawkins"), proving that a little teamwork goes a long way.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 7 out of 10
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Mixed: 2 out of 10
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Negative: 1 out of 10
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Mar 11, 2014
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Mar 6, 2014