Recorded using loans solicited from family, friends, and fans, Southern Rock Opera could be considered one of the first ‘crowd-funded’ albums, predating Kickstarter by over a decade. Ostensibly a rock opera relating the trials and tribulations of fictional rock band Betamax Guillotine, whose trajectory loosely parallels that of Lynyrd Skynyrd in microcosm, or something, the enormous and occasionally endurance-testing Southern Rock Opera is the band’s breakthrough album, the one that introduced Drive-By Truckers to the world.  It is inarguably deserving of its sterling reputation. The album’s storyline is, as with most rock operas, somewhere between puzzling and inscrutable, but it hardly matters. The sonic palette, widely expanded from the home-recorded Pizza Deliverance despite a shoestring budget, magnifies the band’s strengths as a wholly committed, formidable rock band: guitars become primeval thundercracks, the suddenly bulky rhythm section swings for picket fences, and vocals cut through the din as if the lyrics were being read off scraps of sandpaper. Still, all this synergistic chemistry and dauntless ambition wouldn’t amount to much without great songs; luckily, Southern Rock Opera is quite literally full of them. Hood’s autobiographical “Let There Be Rock” is the Drive-By Truckers song that launched a hundred message boards, while Cooley’s equally personal “Zip City” features one of his most quotable — nay, tattoo-able! — lyrics: “I got 350 heads on a 305 engine/ I get ten miles to the gallon/ I ain’t got no good intentions.” Elsewhere, “Women Without Whiskey” is the sound of a man with hands too shaky to write a Dear John letter to the bottle that let him down; Hood’s “The Three Great Alabama Icons” drafts a team comprising controversial segregationist and original flip-flopper Governor George Wallace, legendary University of Alabama head coach Bear Bryant, and doomed Lynyrd Skynyrd vocalist Ronnie Van Zant to help testify of the “duality of the Southern thing”; even two serviceable songwriting contributions by third wheel Rob Malone move the story, and the album, along nicely. The entire album seems to lead up to “Angels and Fuselage,” which concludes this opera not with a fat lady, but with a harrowing plane crash. This masterwork of mood and menace, which tops out at just over eight minutes, is alt country’s “Expressway To Yr Skull.” It’s a song that encapsulates Southern Rock Opera’s recurring themes of determination, salvation, and penance that doesn’t forget pride. These are songs encrypted with allusions cultural, historical and personal, combining to create a rich embroidery of allegory and tall tales. We’re a long way from Buttholeville, folks.