Alabama 3
Exile on Coldharbour Lane
1997
Wikipedia
Exile on Coldharbour Lane is Alabama 3's first and greatest album. You've heard at least one track off it; Woke Up This Morning was the theme tune to The Sopranos, sampled and clumsily parodied into oblivion. It's a great injustice, because the song easily stands up on its own without the added cultural baggage. It's the tragic centrepiece to a concept album dealing with some fairly diverse ideas.
The album contemplates that very American phenomenon of pseudo-Christian cults, with Hypo Full of Love and the Jim Jones-sampling Mao Tse Tung Said both running with the idea of the cult as a political drug. In a sense it's this theme that ties the album together, with the band assuming the identity of a religious family addicted variously to alcohol, heroin and electric blues. The album is also a commentary on ageing, and the pain of looking back on one's youth. The songs U Don't Dans 2 Tekno and The Night We Nearly Got Busted both ring with nostalgic pain and a longing for the bad old days. Woke Up This Morning ties this idea to the concept of death, and the horror a man feels as he realises he's staring his own death down. In the harmonica-backed spoken piece at the start of the song, the narrator bids farewell to his heroes:
"I say, so long Eric [Dolphy], so long, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus
So long, Duke Ellington and Leslie Young
So long, Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald
So long, Jimmy Reed, so long, Muddy Waters
An' so, long Howlin' Wolf"
Once Upon a Time in the West was originally supposed to see Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef being gunned down at the station, and the idea's the same. In the movie, the Old West was dying, and here it's the Blues, with the narrator going down with the ship. Death, I'd argue, is the overriding theme of the album. It deals with the mass suicides in Guyana, the tragic death of Eric Dolphy, burning out on ecstasy, the decline of the political left, and the growing emptiness and futility of the hippy movement.
The album isn't without its weaknesses. It does occasionally appear to be overly concerned with its own blues influence, and the ironic American accents adopted by Larry and D Wayne Love do begin to grate. The whole album is layered with references and hidden meaning, and it's not a great introduction to the blues and folk culture that it's so steeped in. It is probably this obscure context that has prevented the album from becoming more popular. It appeared at the tail end of the Britpop phenomenon, although it had more in common with its predecessors, Madchester and Paisley Underground. Nevertheless, it is an incredible album, and one which pays back the effort put into it tenfold.
