When the Drive-By Truckers initiated their three-guitar lineup to tell the Lynyrd Skynrd story on Southern Rock Opera, they gave their exploration of contemporary southern life on the margins a resonant musical setting. The mythic nature of Skynyrd made its musical lineup a rich tool for talking about roots, love, debauchery and Buford Pusser, the latter the subject of a suite of songs on 2004’s excellent The Dirty South. The band made itself larger than life, particularly as the live shows stretched out into Springsteenian marathons, earning fans and critical acclaim, with many dubbing them the great American rock ’n’ roll band.

A Blessing and a Curse sounds like a band trying to regain a sense of scale. There are no riffs here as monstrously heavy as “Lookout Mountain,” and there’s nothing as rollicking as “Marry Me.” Singer Patterson Hood indulges his love of the Replacements and writes two Westerbergian songs, “Feb. 14” sounding almost like a lost ’Mats song. The songs rarely sound like updated ’70s songs, leaning on melodies this time, with the second, third, and sometimes fourth guitar adding shimmering layers of texture. For that reason, this is the least immediate Truckers’ album.

As exhilarating as their music can be, the songs are rarely very sunny, and that’s certainly the case here. The album’s title could be a subtitle for every song here, as people deal with the painful downside of getting what you want. It’s such a consistent theme on the album that it’s hard not to wonder if it applies to the lives led by the band and its writers, Hood, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell. Cooley’s songs particularly are heavily tinged with regret, but Hood’s last word is a moving finish to the album.

“A World of Hurt” is a largely spoken meditation on dealing with the pain of life and love, and the chorus — “It’s going to be a world of hurt” — is murmured over a delicately lovely melody. But after, in effect, embracing the power of love, he says simply, “It’s great to be alive,” and it’s not an ironic or hokey moment. It sounds more like a naked moment of someone who worked out one of life’s central questions, and when he returns to the chorus, it sounds less haunted and more like a statement of what he’s up against. It’s what the band is up against, and what we’re up against, and the song and the band’s process of getting to that realization makes them one of the few bands that is required listening right now.