Its title referring to the day southern churches place flowers on the graves of departed loved ones, Decoration Day is a song cycle about family, choices, and the sacrifices demanded by each. Written largely during a two-year marathon of touring in support of Southern Rock Opera, Decoration Day vividly describes the consequences of this distance. Perhaps even more than the concept album Southern Rock Opera, Decoration Day is marked by motif; Each of the band’s three songwriters contributes a song to Decoration Day that references wedding rings, and the song titled “Marry Me” isn’t even one of them. Both Hood and Cooley refer in separate songs to being ‘outgrown’ by a partner, and the marital tensions described in Cooley’s “Sounds Better In The Song” are echoed in Hood’s “(Something’s Got To) Give Pretty Soon” and “Heathens,” proof of the synchronicity that occurs between collaborators who’ve spent so much time together, their preoccupations begin to intertwine. All three songwriters repeatedly reference stubborn, principled patriarchs, whether characterized by Isbell’s wraithlike Daddy Lawson on the album’s title track, Hood’s landowning father spinning in his grave in “Sinkhole,” or Cooley’s unrepentant, prophylactic-shunning progenitor in “Marry Me.” It also contains a lot of ‘firsts:’ Most importantly, the album marks the debut of third guitarist/vocalist Jason Isbell, who replaces Rob Malone and arrives with a writing style that meshes far better with Hood and Cooley than any previous songwriting band members. Almost as crucially, it is the band’s first album recorded at Chase Park Transduction Studios in Athens, Georgia with producer David Barbe, with whom the Truckers would henceforth enjoy a long and fruitful working relationship. The album also features the first appearance on a Drive-By Truckers record of bassist Shonna Tucker, who contributes upright bass to Cooley’s “Sounds Better In The Song”; pedal steel guitarist John Neff returns as a guest after sitting out Southern Rock Opera, and Spooner Oldham debuts on Wurlitzer. All three would soon become full-time members of the band in some capacity. Decoration Day also significantly closes a chapter: the album is the last to include longtime Truckers bassist Earl Hicks, who’d be replaced by Shonna Tucker for the following year’s The Dirty South. Following as it does the wildly successful Southern Rock Opera, Decoration Day is the first Drive-By Truckers album recorded with the knowledge that people would be listening; in the three years between the release of Southern Rock Opera and Decoration Day, Drive-By Truckers went from soliciting loved ones and friends for donations to finance their recordings to a band with an audience eagerly awaiting a follow-up. Fans were not disappointed: Decoration Day is not only stronger than its predecessor, it is the strongest of the band’s entire career. It begins with “The Deeper In,” a harrowing tale of incest, forbidden love, and a life on the run that plays like a prurient tale from Donald J Pollack’s groundbreaking novel Knockemstiff rendered in waltz time. The chthonic nine-note melody of “Sinkhole,” equal parts Blue Oyster Cult and Thin Lizzy, sets the mood for Patterson’s raucous rap of propriety and punishment, inspired by Ray McKinnon’s Academy Award-winning short film The Accountant. The tune that introduced the world to 24-year old Alabamian Jason Isbell, “Outfit” is an auspicious debut by anyone’s standards, and one the gifted and prolific Isbell has yet to live down. Isbell is a shrewd observer with a tendency toward regionalism, a combination that puts him alongside great writers, from Lou Reed to Harry Crews, with similarly indivisible geographical tethers. Finally, the ever-irreverent Cooley’s “Loaded Gun In The Closet” ignores playwright Anton Chekhov’s famous declaration that a gun introduced in the first act needs to fire by the end of the play, ending this masterpiece of an album not with a bang or a whimper, but with a riddle.