Description

Alabama 3 – Power In The Blood

Available on Limited Edition Double White Vinyl and on CD. White edition limited to 1,000 units. BAR CODE 5 016958 099039 WHITE VINYL

“Here’s a few keywords for the Alabama 3. Swagger. Funk. Blues. Country. Western. Techno. Acid. Elvis. God. Cocaine. Trotsky. Gangsters. Genius.

Sounds like my kind of world. A world where they don’t play anything as prosaic as a ‘gig’. They’re called Sermons. And they don’t go on ‘tour’. They get Parole. You don’t become a fan. You get Converted.

Throw in a fixation with extreme left-wing politics, Hubert Selby Jr., and the redeeming power of God through the cross and the salvation of the needle and you have something that just doesn’t sound right on paper. Unless you actually listen to it.

Their songs are empty, hollow landscapes of a lost preacher enduring the long dark night of the soul in a Memphis jazz bar. Of the lost, and of the lonesome tonight. They play the music of the evening before – the things that go bleep in the night – and the music of the morning after. The blues. The soft, exhausted drawl of exhausted desperation. In the same song. Titles such as “The Devil Went Down To Ibiza” and “Lord Have Mercy” establish the hitherto missing link between Robert Johnson and Aphex Twin. And here it is. Music like this sounds it was made in 1930 and 2030 at the same time.

A revolutionary call to arms in the form of the title track “Power In The Blood” make a Jihad against capitalism sound like the most fun war’s been since you were a kid and had an Action Man™. “Woody Guthrie” takes every right-wing prejudice, debunks it, and rocks harder than James Brown at the Apollo.

They don’t make records like this anymore. They never did. Look beyond your prejudices. Look beyond boundaries and such artificial barriers as nations, styles, and genres.

I haven’t been able to take this out of my CD Player since I got it. It’s more addictive than crack with no lasting ill-effects. For fucks sake, if you think that music’s going through a lull right now, buy this, and be redeemed by The Spirit. You will be forgiven.” – Drowned in Sound

Tracklist:
1. Two Heads
2. Power in the Blood
3. Reachin’
4. Woody Guthrie
5. Year Zero
6. The Devil Went Down to Ibiza
7. Strobe Life
8. R.E.H.A.B.
9. The Moon has Lost the Sun
10. Let the Caged Bird Sing
11. Yellow Rose
12. Bullet Proof
12. Badlands
14. Lord Have Mercy
15. Come on Home