Drive-By Truckers @ O2 Ritz, Manchester, 1 Mar

Eleven albums in and touring what many believe to be their best record (2016’s American Band), Drive-By Truckers remain an absolute force to be reckoned with. Fronted these days by co-founders Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, the two switch vocal duties song-to-song – Hood kicks thing off with Baggage, the album's mordant last track and their tribute to Robin Williams. It’s unexpected as a set opener but strangely gripping. It takes Cooley (sounding like a country rock John Darnielle) and his cut Ramon Casiano to get things cooking though, with its tale of border agents and creative deportations, Chinese troops and terrorists. This shit couldn’t be more current.  

The old favourites draw the biggest cheers – Gravity’s Gone, Lookout Mountain, the rifftastic gloriousness of Ronnie and Neil. Ever South gives Hood the opportunity to launch into the now obligatory bashing of The Donald (de rigueur for any US band playing the UK at the moment) but helps to show what makes them great – they don’t just blindly lash out at the fish in the barrel, they tie the situation to the lives they’ve lived and try to make sense of it. It’s one of many highlights.

The only criticism you could really level at DBT is that they're such an entertainment machine these days, there doesn’t seem room for spontaneity – and sometimes you want Cooley or multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzalez to just wig out. A little bit. We’re not saying they have to be Mercury Rev – but they could occasionally Wilco a bit. There’s certainly weirdness in them – the way in which they slip a mini-cover of Prince’s Sign o’ the Times into set closer Hell No, I Ain't Happy proves that.

But it’s a quibble, is all. 23 songs from the finest purveyors of country rock around is still a pretty good night out by anyone’s standards.