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THE INDEPENDENT'S ALBUM OF THE WEEK
THE INDEPENDENT'S ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Alabama 3 MOR *****
Reviewed by Andy Gill in 'The Independent'
07 September 2007
The title, as with most things about Alabama 3, should be taken with a
pinch of salt, as just another example of the innate ambivalence with
which they regard the world. How could it be otherwise, from a South
London country-techno-funk combo that most Americans, at least,
probably still believe is one of their own?
Their concerns remain pretty much the same as ever on M.O.R: an unholy
communion of politics, religion, sex and drugs, in which indulgence and
morality are held in precarious equilibrium, and presented via some of
the most infectious, well-rooted grooves you'll hear all year. Hence
their interest in the "Middle of the Road", a song that, as references
to David Crosby, "desperado" and "life in the fast lane" make clear, is
about the California cocaine cowboys of the Seventies epitomised by the
likes of Crosby and The Eagles, whose delusions of revolutionary hippie
principles were starkly at odds with their actual situation. "You think
you're living on the edge," growls Larry Love, "but you're in the
middle of the road" – albeit "going hell for leather" down the white
line.
A similar conundrum afflicts the narrator of the sultry soul-jazz
number "Fly", whose relationship is threatened by his preference for
living on cloud nine, viewing life through a hedonist haze as his real
environment deteriorates into a mess of cigarette burns and spilt
booze. It's probably the same guy that reappears in the country-soul
rocker "Lockdown", applying his own, more liberal attitude to a soused
lover: "You're on lockdown, loaded, but I love you."
It's not all sex, drugs and booze, however. There's religion, in the
form of "Holy Blood"; and of course there's death, the fourth cowboy of
the country-music apocalypse, who rears his head in the murder ballad
"The Doghouse Chronicles", and in a couple of cover versions. Jerry
Reed's sly song about a Cajun alligator poacher, "Amos Moses", is an
infectious, lolloping swamp boogie, while Gil Scott-Heron's "The Klan"
is treated to an equally appropriate country makeover.
But the album's real aces are a pair of relatively straightforward
dance cuts: "Work It (All Night Long)" is a hypnotic, loping groove in
which rasping wah-wah guitar and quirky, squelching synth are stitched
together seamlessly; and "Monday Don't Mean Anything to Me", in which
charged brass stabs and fiery female backing vocals lend the groove a
feverish dance propulsion comparable to Basement Jaxx.
Buy M.O.R here...
