When I was just a lad, I used to spend hours listening to classic rock radio. Growing up in mid-Michigan, it's just what you did (and still do - how many bands less than 25 years old have you seen playing Common Ground?). I'd comb the dial, flipping frantically between the Lansing area's three oldies and three classic rock stations to find scraps of Hendrix, Zeppelin or Neil Young amidst the seemingly endless Boston, Journey and Foreigner tracks. After a while, I just gave up; I found less punishing, more convenient ways to hear the music I love, some of it actually released since 1985. But when I listen to the Drive-By Truckers, those days of Buzz 94.9, Q101.6 and Oldies 97.5 come flashing back - and I mean that in the best possible way.

Much like early Wilco, Drive-By Truckers take the whole of '70s rock and country and do the dial-combing for us: extracting everything real and honest and beautiful from the endless drum solos, AOR yacht rock and coke-fueled indulgence discerning listeners like us would just as soon forget. Songs like "Feb 14," "Gravity's Gone" and the title track could have been recorded in 1976 just as easily as 2006; the fact that they're performed with such passion and heart-on-sleeve intensity is what makes them feel alive in the here and now. Call it "dad rock" if you want to, but I'm one of those Luddites who believes in music before the advent of irony. And if the occasional track here starts to resemble a fist-pumping power ballad too closely for even my tastes (see "Easy on Yourself"), well, that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Because where A Blessing and a Curse is concerned, Drive-By Truckers' sometimes painful, shameless authenticity is far more blessing than curse. The hard-luck images painted by songs like "Aftermath USA" ("crystal meth in the bathtub / blood splattered in my sink") are as heart-breaking as they are darkly funny; and in moments like the broken-relationship ballad "Space City" and the dead-child elegy "Little Bonnie," the characters in these narratives become as alive and real as the singers and the songs.

Best of all, however, is closing track "A World of Hurt," which pairs drawled life lessons with a soaring, mournful chorus in a manner which might remind more jaded listeners of Baz Luhrmann's 1998 novelty hit "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)". But goddammit, when that pedal steel guitar rises to a crescendo, and when singer Patterson Hood, his voice halfway between sarcasm and confession, admonishes that "it's great to be alive," I'm about an eyelash's breadth from tears every time. Maybe it's not for everybody - I'll be the first to admit that the Truckers are about as "fashionable" as stonewashed jeans - but what have you heard lately that's made you want to break down and cry?

Reviewed by Zach Hoskins