ON the surface, there is no deeper connection between these two bands than 'Truck': in the band name for one, the band label for the other.

However, they share a madness of ambition to provoke, a purloining of past sounds and a wilful, independent streak.

Initially self-released in autumn 2001 and now saved from oblivion by Lost Highway, Drive-By-Truckers' Southern Rock Opera is a most improbable record: a two-disc, 20-song concept album, five years in the making, about the rise and fall of Betamax Guillotine, a semi-mythical Southern band based loosely on those Icarus rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd. With its coming-of-age tales of greed, ambition, substance abuse, car crashes and a fiery final curtain, set to Seventies' Dixie-fried rock'n'roll, it revitalises the rock opera form, moribund since Meat Loaf parked up his Bat bike.

Ample room is found for pop-culture mythology; a homage to Neil Young and Ronnie Van Zant; political history lessons involving segregationist Governor George Wallace; and contemplation on the contradictions and misrepresentations of the American Deep South. Raucous and raw, smoking and smart, Southern Rock Opera is that rarity today: bravura music-making destined for cult status.

From hell raisers to Hull-raised Fonda 500, scatterbrain experimenters in lo-fi, cheap-gear noodling, whose third album spans pastoral symphonies, Japanese counting songs, Eighties corn, the sweetest ballads, half-finished sketches and the nuttiest titles (Bumble A Bumble B Bumble C Bumble D).

When, mid-record, they call a minute's worth of a stuck stylus sound Why Context Is Essential To Us And Everyone, they are as cussed and maddening as Belle And Sebastian, but like those fey Scots they know their way around a vintage song book. It is hard not to grow fonder of Fonda with every play.

Updated: 09:47 Thursday, September 05, 2002