Even with Lent silencing my car stereo to and from work for some reflection time with the Man upstairs (a long story related to a Penance I received back in the 90s, and really calms the nerves with surrounding LA drivers, too), still a whole lotta music sharing time in the players lately. Here's the tops o' the pops ...

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS / The Big To-Do -- It'd be easy to think cranking out five absolutely spectacular albums between 2001 and 2008 -- one of them a true double album (Southern Rock Opera) and another what essentially amounted to a double (Brighter Than Creation's Dark) -- would leave any band a tad on the depleted side. Throw in a live album and a collection of non-album cuts and alternate takes (Fineprint), and you really think the tank's near-empty. Well, either credit time in the studio on Booker T's 2009 Grammy-winning Potato Hole or the switch to the ATO label with sparking another notch on the DBT's amazing streak, or just the fact these guys and gal are one of the the best rock and roll bands around these days. The Big To-Do's a little short on songs featuring the band's smokin' ace Mike Cooley, but Patterson Hood's Stan Ridgeway-esque ability to pen 3-4 minute tunes that feel like feature-length films do not disappoint. While "You Got Another" relies too heavily on the formula which made Dark's "I'm Sorry Huston" so hauntingly beautiful, bassist Shonna Tucker still continues to provide the perfect foil to Cooley and Hood's tales from the underbelly, reminding me that Southerners belong right after the Irish and just above baseball players when it comes to the world's greatest storytellers.
Wowzers: "Birthday Boy," "(It's Gonna Be) I Told You So," "The Flying Wallendas," "After the Scene Dies," "Get Downtown"



NICK CURRAN & THE LOWLIFES / Reform School Girl -- 14 songs in under 40 minutes and can I have some more of this blessed bouillabaisse of Chuck Berry/Cadillacs/Rockabilly/Shangri-Las/Little Richard, please ... stat?!?! Curran even employs a feller on the stand-up bass, legitimizing how great this sounds (at least according to the Book of Rufus).
Wowzers: "Baby You Crazy," "Reform School Girl," "Lusty Li'l Lucy," "Dream Girl," "Kill My Baby," cover Curranification of AC/DC's "Rocker"



Ratt / "The Best of Me" -- Peg the jeans, tease the hair with Aqua-Net, dust off your Out of the Cellar cassette ... get some spandex and/or chaps if you must. From their forthcoming Infestation album, featuring newest member Carlos Cavazo (Quiet Riot), it's the mid-80s all over again and gloomy ol' Curt Cobain's not gonna wreck the party this time. Not Freedom Rock, but turn it up!!!