Killers and Stars
album by Patterson Hood
Killers and Stars is the first solo album by Drive-By Truckers frontman Patterson Hood. It was released on May 4, 2004 on New West Records. It was originally not intended for commercial release, and limited editions of it were sold at shows before it was officially released in 2004.
Background and recording
Hood recorded the album over two nights in March 2001 in his dining room. At the time, the Drive-By Truckers had just finished recording their album Southern Rock Opera, and Hood was going through a divorce. In its liner notes, he recalled his mental state when he was recording the album: "I was feeling pretty freaked out and isolated and this album was my therapy." Because it was recorded at Hood's home, multiple critics have compared it to Bruce Springsteen's album Nebraska, which was also a home recording.
However, with regard to these comparisons, Rob Trucks noted that "Hood's self-imposed exile fosters a rage more aligned with a dormant Charlie Starkweather than Springsteen."
Critical reception
Critics generally gave Killers and Stars favorable reviews; for example, Mark Deming of AllMusic gave it 4 out of 5 stars and wrote that "like Nebraska, Killers and Stars is an album whose plain surfaces and rough edges only add to the impact of the final work." Another favorable review was written by Pitchfork Media's Stephen M. Deusner, who gave the album a 7.4 out of 10 rating.
“Killers and Stars” enters the record as album by Patterson Hood. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Killers, Stars and album can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q30639201. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Killers and Stars” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.