By Patrick Ferrucci, Register Entertainment Editor

Drive-By Truckers — “The Big To-Do” (ATO Records): The Alabama-born, Georgia-based sextet Drive-By Truckers continues its reign as, arguably, America’s greatest band going with the 13-song “The Big To-Do,” the group’s eighth studio album. It’s a big, bold statement that firmly positions the collective as the South’s answer to Bruce Springsteen.

With a three-guitar attack, main songwriter Patterson Hood and the rest of the Truckers deliver a stunning and rousing set of tunes devoted to highlighting people going through tough times. Since the tail end of the 20th century, DBT has been telling stories about real problems. Here we get tales of alcoholism, child abandonment, poverty — all the realities that happen to ordinary people.

This is an album that digs deep into what’s happening right now. It’s a musical accompaniment to the film “Up in the Air,” about what may result from job loss and the economic instability the nation’s encountering. Similar to all the songs The Boss penned about people dealing with dismal by-products of Reaganomics, this disc doesn’t sugarcoat, and it doesn’t mess around.

“The Big To-Do” is the group’s most muscular record in a long while. It simply rocks hard, with big guitars, pounding drums and searing leads. It’s easily the best DBT album since 2003’s “Decoration Day,” and it far outshines the group’s last work: the very good, but messy and overly long “Brighter Than Creation’s Dark” from 2008.

The album begins with a tale of adultery in “Daddy Learned to Fly,” a ramshackle and anthemic blast of energy that’s easily on par with anything the Truckers have done before. While guitarist and co-songwriter Mike Cooley only donates three songs to this work, his “Birthday Boy,” about an encounter with a prostitute, simply stuns with its barroom swagger and catchy chorus. Of course, the tune most will be talking about is Hood’s thunderous “This (expletive deleted) Job,” a rocker about a guy struggling with a dead-end job over a spot in the unemployment line. It’s an odd tune to be singing along to, but that’s exactly what the listener will encounter.

Bassist Shona Tucker’s two contributions to “The Big To-Do” include the ballad “You Got Another,” a piano-based weeper that showcases Tucker’s sultry and impressive vocal ability more than anything on “Brighter than Creation’s Dark,” the first album to feature her songwriting.

The critical lauds that DBT has reaped are far too numerous to count. This is a band universally regarded as the best to be working today. While that’s certainly debatable, there’s no denying that “The Big To-Do” hits upon something incredibly timely.

It’s a big, brutish record that stares down the barrel of reality, an unsympathetic look at what this second Great Depression has meant for many regular folks. And like Springsteen’s been doing for decades, the Truckers do it all without abandoning hope and while playing a set of seriously entertaining and fist-pumping anthems. It’s a blustery Southern rock celebration, a guitar-fueled mission statement that will surely see the top portion of many best-of lists long after the economy gets better.

Clem Snide — “The Meat of Life” (429 Records): While last year’s “Hungry Bird” was widely regarded as a Clem Snide reunion disc, it was largely recorded back in 2006, before the indie favorites took a three-year sabbatical. In fact, it’s “The Meat of Life” that can be considered a reunion, as the 12-song work features a return to the band’s classic lineup and sound.

The easy criticism of the Nashville-based Clem Snide — named after a character in William S. Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch” — is that over the course of its previous six records, singer/songwriter Eef Barzelay and his rotating cast of co-conspirators haven’t really evolved much. And the same can be said about “The Meat of Life,” the band’s seventh studio disc. Continued...

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If you’re a fan of Clem Snide, you know what you’re going to get with this one, even if it is a little more upbeat and easily much better than “Hungry Bird.”

The disc opens with one of its finest moments, the genial “Walmart Parking Lot,” a tune, like many by Barzelay, that’s just dripping with sarcasm. He sings “Sunrise in a Walmart Parking Lot/Well it can be so beautiful.” It’s that kind of lyric that Barzelay can follow up with some about having the crap kicked out of him that makes up a typical Clem Snide tune.

If you skipped over “Hungry Bird” and put “The Meat of Life” just after 2005’s splendid “The End of Love” in the Clem Snide discography, we’d be talking about a band that never misses but doesn’t grow much either. That’s not too shabby if Clem Snide’s brand of snarky-yet-sensitive indie rock is up your alley.

Patrick Ferrucci can be reached at pferrucci@newhavenregister.com or 203-789-5678.

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