Album Review: Southern Rock Opera by Drive-By Truckers

Don't be deterred by the rather misleading title. Not a rock opera in the sense of Tommy or Jesus Christ Superstar, this sprawling double disc is more akin to a song cycle about Southern rock, in particular Lynyrd Skynyrd. Almost six years in the making, the Drive-By Truckers have created a startlingly intelligent work that proudly stands with the best music of their obvious inspiration.

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Back in 1985, Patterson Hood met Mike Cooley at the University of North Alabama and the two formed Adam’s Housecat, a rootsy punk band that won Musician‘s “Best Unsigned Band” award in 1988 and recorded an album that was never released. AHC lasted until 1991-and didn’t play any Lynyrd Skynyrd either, a band these two Alabamans heard enough of growing up. Time, however, has a way of recasting the past, and one day, an older, wiser Patterson Hood found some Skynyrd records in a sale bin.

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Stained with motor oil and hard liquor, the Drive-By Truckers' latest offering offers a murky trip through Southern folklore and a homage to the redemptive power of rock ‘n’ roll. True to its title, Southern Rock Opera details the rise-and-fall of fictional rockers Betamax Guillotine. Sharing many similarities with prototypical Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd, the band encounters personal disaster, dope and the effects of an entire sub-Mason-Dixon mythology.

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