Alabama 3 are one of those bands, the ones that you’ve maybe heard soundtracking some TV show (in this case The Sopranos) but never trouble the charts. Quite how they’ve managed to maintain a career out of a mixture of fake Americanisms, gospel, techno, easy listening and, yes, M.O.R. is a great mystery, one that is unlikely to be answered by their sixth album.
Even the oddly mono cover of ‘Amos Moses’, a retro swamp blues stomp by Jerry Reed can’t save the first half sinking into a slump of ‘so what?’ness. Things pick up a little with some able rap from MC Pablo on ‘Are You a Souljah?’, but ‘Hooked’ drifts a little too close to parody.
And that’s probably the problem with Alabama 3, they seem so arch and knowing that it’s impossible to tell if they’re serious about all this or just laughing at us for buying (or not, in their case) fake Americana.
Watch out for the fake ending on closer ‘Sweet Joy’ (featuring the Proclaimers, though you can hardly tell), as it fades back in after possibly the longest pause in the history of recorded music (about 3 minutes), and the bit after the silence is the finest thing on the whole album.