Alabama 3 - A Celebration Of Exile On Coldharbour Lane & La Peste plus the Greatest Hits

They don’t make bands like Alabama 3 anymore.

Emerging out of the haze of the late 1980s South London acid house squat scene, their pioneering

combination of soulful, bluesy country rock with the irresistible pulse of techno gave them a sound all of

their own.

By the end of the century they’d found a global audience by giving The Sopranos its indelible theme

tune, and were taking their ecstatic 12-piece live show to venues all over the planet.

In November 2023, Alabama 3 returned with their vital fourteenth studio album, a stirring soundtrack

for our times titled ‘Cold War Classics Vol. 2’, which layers darkly comic social commentary over the sort

of tunes designed to help you dance your worries away. “There’s nothing more boring than a polemic-

filled political rant of a record,” observes frontman Larry Love. “I like to think there’s some fun in the

darkness… otherwise you’re just having a whinge.”

The Alabama 3 story started, as many good stories do, at a rave in Peckham. It was there that Rob

Spragg (aka Larry Love) met Jake Black (aka The Very Reverend D. Wayne Love), and the pair soon

started making sweet music together. “D. Wayne Love used to DJ and I would MC,” recalls Love. “We’d

mix in Robert Johnson, Mahalia Jackson and blues stuff with techno.” At the height of Britpop, they were

signed by Geffen for a million dollars and went on to release their seminal debut album ‘Exile on

Coldharbour Lane’ in 1997. Early critics dismissed their sonic experiments as the work of a novelty act,

something their longevity refutes. “Unlike a lot of our contemporaries, we’re still standing,” points out

Love. “That template of mixing acid house and country & western with a sort of Marxist ideology has

stood the test of time.”

In 2019, the band were rocked by the untimely death of The Very Reverend D. Wayne Love. Their 2021

album ‘Step 13’ featured posthumous appearances from the late vocalist, but for the new album he’s

limited to a solitary “Goodnight Larry!” at the end of the record. “‘Step 13’ was very much recorded

under the hangover of his early demise,” explains Love. “It was important to us this time that we in no

way broke from his tradition or his immense contribution, but developed into something a bit more

independent of him.” That evolution meant adding a new drummer, bass player and horn section to the

band. “I've got loads of unused tracks of D. Wayne Love, but he wouldn’t have wanted us to just be

fuckin’ regurgitating his out-takes, do you know what I mean?” says Love. “We’ve kind of recalibrated

this thing.”