Considering that they've supplied the USA's most popular series EVER with a suitably cool theme tune ('The Sopranos', bozo - what sandpit are you skulking in?) you'd think that Brixton's finest ALABAMA 3 would check in as more than just a middling-size cult concern at this stage.
However, while the mobster-soundtracking "Woke Up This Morning" may never have been a bona fide hit in its' own right, it's obviously helped sledgehammer open a goodly proportion of doors for this most singular of bands. Hell, with the possible exception of Paul Oakenfold's "Bunkka", "Power In The Blood" features this year's most star-studded supporting cast, including Hubert Selby Jnr, David McAlmont, Irvine Welsh, omnipresent pedal steel supremo BJ Cole and the ubiquitous Keith Allen.
More importantly, "Power In The Blood" - A3's third album - is the one that really should have them on champers-swigging terms with the mainstream if there's any justice, as this is one super-phonky mutha of an album, full of cheek, subverson, hard-bitten reality and (even more importantly) it's got a tune quotient to make a taxidermist blush.
OK, this is Alabama 3, bub, so you gotta expect some piss-taking and self mythologising, and there are a few less than essential bits here. In all honesty, this writer could do without the lobotomised, but pithy "Strobe Life" (self-explanatory to anyone with the most fleeting knowledge of rave culture), whilst the amusing Townes Van Zandt/ gospel pastiche "Two Heads" is only a thumbnail sketch and the 'cover' of Bruce Springsteen's "Badlands" is only a tossed-off acoustic snatch recorded in what sounds like a basement bar.
Nonetheless, the remainder is seriously kickin' and lyrically slashes into many of today's current issues with the precision of a skilled surgeon. One of the best guest spots is Hubert Selby's spooky sampled intro to the devilish "The Moon Has Lost The Sun", while the langorous, bluesy grooves and huge tesifyin' choruses of songs like "R.E.H.A.B", "Reachin'" and the magnificent "Bulletproof" are mightily resonant. This latter features a sassy vocal contribution from one Siobhan Parr, who I'm reliably informed is only 17. The lady's gonna be a star: mark these words!
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There's far more to discover than we have time for here, really. If this writer was backed into a corner, though, he'd probably plump for the global strife travelogue of "Lord Have Mercy" and the gung-ho patriotism-bashing of "Woody Guthrie" as his favourite tracks. The former is multi-layered, triggered by strategic samples and sets the blues and technology on a collision course, while the superb "Woody Guthrie" sets the pioneering hobo's "This Land Is Your Land" in a modern context involving Afghanistan, Columbine, the BNP and asylum seekers. If we were living in a better world, the ace chorus: "Don't need no country, don't fly no flag/ Cut no slack for the Union Jack, Stars and Stripes have got me jetlagged" would be blaring from radios and school assemblies alike.
Musically, "Power In The Blood" is (mostly) happily approachable, with a confidence and proficiency seeping through these huge choruses and the band's bourbon-sloshing summit meetings with the blues, folk and sampling stretching on through the long night. ALABAMA 3 get nagging PRIMAL SCREAM comparisons, but - for all his rhetoric - I can't remember Bobby Gillespie ever sounding so sussed.
And there's the rub, for in the cold light of day, Larry Love and The Reverend D.Wayne Love's sleazoid, but reality-saturated missives are probably too accurate for mass consumption. It would be a real pity if that's the case, though as "Power In The Blood" is a reckless, but nourishing prescription for head, heart and hips: not to mention the most brain-flaying, but irresistible party you're ever liable to be invited to. Capiche?
(TIM PEACOCK)
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