Drive-By TruckersUgly Buildings, Whores & Politicians: Greatest Hits 1998-2009

Three guitars with mud on the boots, drawled vocals, and red-clay Alabama tension between celebration and dread. "The Living Bubba" is Hood's ragged elegy for a musician who kept gigging while dying of AIDS, and Cooley's "Zip City" turns small-town lust into one of the band's best-loved hooks. "Ronnie and Neil" wrestles with the Skynyrd/Neil Young feud and the duality of the Southern thing. Sixteen tracks across the three-songwriter peak. The smartest way in before the whole sprawl.