Forge talks to Larry Love of Country/Acid House fusioneers Alabama 3 about dubstep, The Sopranos and two new albums.
How are you, then?
Good, looking forward to Winter. Keep your shades on, innit.
You’re heading out on tour in November – looking forward to it?
Very much so, yeah. Get pissed ‘til ten in the morning, wake up at six, get fed and then drink ‘til ten in the evening, it’s brilliant. We always really enjoy touring; we’re the only band who get healthier when we go on tour.
Any particular plans for this one? Anything new?
We’ve got a new singer, replacing Delvin Love who’s gone off on maternity leave. And we’ve got a new album out called 12 Step Plan next week and another one in March, so we’ll be playing a couple of tracks off them.
You initially had a plan to let your fans in on the songwriting process for the new album, letting them whittle down 36 tracks to an album’s length, and that became 12 Step Plan.
Yeah, they’d have sets of three tracks, and for each one they’d have to pick a song out of the three. So that’s going to be available for fans only at our gigs and on our website.
But somewhere along the road you wrote some newer songs that were apparently too good to be overlooked, and that’s going to be another new album?
Yeah, we did. We’ve been quite busy boys, we’ve got an acoustic album, we’ve got Revolver Soul coming out in March… There’s nine of us, and we’ve all over the age of forty, so we should be able to do something fucking decent, shouldn’t we.
Should we be expecting something really inspired with the album in March then?
You can expect to be inspired in November as well – it’s a two-pronged attack, the 12 Step… album’s going to be the entrée and the hors d’hourve will be Revolver Soul.
Is there an evolution in sound between the two, would you say?
One’s very rock ‘n’ roll and one’s very digital and urban, so there’s a bit of yin and yang going on.
Two major aspects of your sound.
Exactly. If we did a Christmas album in between we’d have all three covered, innit.
Are you ready to let us know about any of those surprise guests you’ve mentioned that will feature on Revolver Soul?
Err… [long pause] Yeah, we’ve got Shane McGowan, Huey from Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Angelica Houston, Johnny Borrel from Razorlight, and quite a few underground people, you know?
That’s quite the guestlist. It’s a very collaborative album then?
Yeah, well as I said we can do from electro to rock ‘n’ roll, so it’s within the canon of what we do.
The UK music scene today is one perhaps more open to unusual fusion than it was in ’97, when you were often accused of being gimmicky – do you think things would have been different if ‘Woke up this Morning’ had soundtracked The Wire is 2009 rather than The Sopranos twelve years ago?
I hope not. I like to live outside the law. I take your point though, and it’s a good point, that the cult television people have got their daddy’s record collections and their grandmother’s record collections and they’re all mashed up together so there has definitely been a breaking down of boundaries – we came out at the height of Britpop and they fucking despised us. We said we were American, we spoke in American accents and said we weren’t celebrating a fading concept of Imperialism. It was all about, “Fuck Kurt Cobain”, you know what I mean. Nah, it’s cool, we’re embraced now, where’s half these fucking bands from the Britpop era? We’ve maintained our own, despite the criticism of being a novelty act, we’ve maintained our audience – albeit a limited one, a loyal fanbase.
Are there any new bands you feel an affinity with?
We work with a lot of underground people. I haven’t been listening to rock ‘n’ roll at the moment, I’ve been listening to dubstep and jazz. Get raving, kids, get to the warehouses, get a DJ, fuck rock ‘n’ roll for a bit.
You’ve always painted yourselves as a truly escapist band, a party band. Has that concept ever felt hollow over the course of your career?
Many a time, yeah, and then I think, ‘Well, fuck it!’ Nah, for all the accusations of being a novelty band, the joy for our fans is that we’re deadly fucking serious when you get beneath the bonhomie. I like that, I think you have to challenge and respect your listeners. But we do what it says on the tin: sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, I’m not saying you can’t be teetotal and be rock ‘n’ roll, but c’mon kids! Shake your fucking arses and the girls in the back will shaking theirs too, know what I mean?