Thursday, April 11th, 2013

Lee Brice – I Drive Your Truck

Not an appropriate song for an “I Drink Your Milkshake” reference…


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Sabina Tang: I once read an article in which a therapist described her patient’s pathological hoarding. This woman had kept the old bathrobe of a deceased aunt, and was unable to throw away the crumpled used tissue in its pocket. When the idea was mooted to her, she cried: it felt like a betrayal, as if she were discarding some aspect of the lost person. I’m afraid this attitude did not strike me as either hoarding, or pathological. Which is to say, the details of Lee Brice’s lyrics — the Gatorade bottle, the old shirt — register with impact, and in any case I’m a sucker for a narrative about sibling love and loss. The tune, though, doesn’t fully rise to the emotional occasion.
[7]

Brad Shoup: A minor masterpiece of lyrical payoff, and a so-right detail up front in the half-empty bottle of Gatorade, but Lee (and the too-gentle arrangement) makes Phil Vassar sound like Johnny Paycheck. When the subject matter’s this serious, you can’t get away with getting out of the way.
[4]

Anthony Easton: There are better examples of this genre, like “Riding with Private Malone” or “If I Don’t Make It Back,” but Brice’s singing in this contains the gravitas of small details and local geography that he hasn’t quite managed before. There’s something almost perverse and quite moving in changing the topic that had previously been about pleasure into something about remembrance and tragedy. Given that the military continues to mostly consist of working class people who are often from the South, and how the ideas of Southern working class culture have, in the last half decade, refused the details of military culture (instead emphasizing pleasure) — this reversal seems darker or more politicized than the sentimental core of the song really is.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: If the IED that blew up my brother’s tank in Iraq had been positioned slightly differently, if he had had his head slightly further down or up or to the side, I don’t know what my reaction to this song would be. I’m guessing it would tear me up inside, but whether that emotional reaction would make it absolutely unlistenable or absolutely necessary, I can’t tell. He drives his own truck now — and we never really bonded over transportation devices anyway — so it’s all abstract.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Every time this threatens to turn as soggy as a rainblown highway in northern Alabama, Brice strings together unexpected metaphors such as what we hear in the chorus. When he rolls down the window, he burns up? Damn. Those piano lines and Brice’s no-nonsense delivery helps. “I hope you don’t mind,” he repeats, and we know he damn well does. Still, I’d rather hear Kip Moore’s truck something-or-other.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: The line “this thing burns gas like crazy/but that’s alright” sits there just waiting to be prodded at, and this is a song loaded with military details. Yet it would be cynical to approach “I Drive Your Truck” from any political angle. This is song about grief and coping, Brice’s narrator having no time for big-picture stuff because he’s too busy escaping into the little details. The music teeters on the edge of overly sentimental… and Brice himself allows for one passage of emotional release late in the song… but “I Drive Your Truck” works because our protagonist is just obsessed with counting change and driving to escape the pain. Brice avoids the politics lurking in the corners to focus instead on what comes after a tragedy.
[8]

Iain Mew: I love the way the first verse unfolds as a quiet, slow drip of details with the one thick bass note like a slight emotional shudder of the shoulders before the cathartic sob of a chorus. The idea of keeping something of someone around by doing what they would have been doing, keeping their truck as it was, is lovely and believably personal. The same powerful dynamics don’t extend to the end of the song, which is all blubbering all the time without really continuing the narrative, but I can’t mind too much.
[7]

Josh Langhoff: This is the creepiest Ford commercial I’ve ever seen.
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Reader average: [6.66] (3 votes)

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