Alabama 3 - La Peste
Release Date: 24 October 2000 (Sony)
Date I Got: December 2000
Best Track: 2129
Other Notable Tracks: Wade Into the Water, Too Sick to Pray, Sinking…
My misgivings about the previous album concerning A3’s earnestness (or lack thereof) are less valid on this release. The humour is less overt and the satire–if it is indeed satire–is less severe. It is darker because of a diminishing of levity, as if the title and album cover didn’t give it away. Though it has nothing that hits like "Woke Up", this is the better of the two albums.
I didn’t like the album on first listen. I bought it shortly after my conversion to the way of the music geek. For a couple of months there I bought one of those New Music Magazines that came with a free sampler. One included "Too Sick to Pray." I liked it well enough to take a chance on the album. I don’t think I listened to it again for six months.
What brought me back to it I don’t know. But I’m glad it happened, and I ended up with quite a fondness for it. It’s not perfect by any stretch; it’s not an album I would expect anyone else to like it like I like it. There are a few tracks here that I think are great.
"Wade Into The Water" is one of the few tracks that let up on the darkness, though there’s still a touch of uneasiness about it–perhaps it just seems from context–but an uneasiness that you can dance away. It’s about something like salvation-as-love or love-as-salvation (and I always get those confused). A sample lyric:
We got brighter than Heaven
And, oh lord, we shown like the stars
I got us drunk as Bogart
You were smokin’ like Bacall
It’s not my favorite track, though. And neither is "Sinking…", the closer. My British poetry knowledge is rusty, but it seems to be aping from "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." I could look it up, but so could you and I’m pretty lazy. But yeah: a ship cursed due to a downed albatross, ship crashes, the usual. It really doesn’t seem that out of place with songs about cocaine and fires and Bad Stuff. But I’m a sucker for themes of salvation and damnation and redemption, and the song’s second half shifts into a major key and provides all three:
Just as we started sinking
The harbor lights came on
Arms of angels carried us
From the rocks that we broke upon
Swam into still water
The band began to play
I heard again that sweet refrain,
Oh Lord the Happy Day:It’s Gonna be…alright
The best track is "2129." It walks the line the previous album tried but failed: it’s not "funny" or "satiric" or anything the that album is, but it does take effort to stay in the music. What I mean is: the song’s lyrics almost challenge you to willfully abandon any attempt to parse them, primarily via copious name-checking and a response of "Hey I know who that it!". Those include (but not limited too) Jesus, John Lennon, Robert Johnson, Judas, Mary, Sgt. Pepper, JFK, and the album’s only mention of Lenin (or maybe it’s another Lennon?). The songwriting here–and by this I mean the music and the sound of words, primarily, though the words are still pretty interesting–overcomes this limitation. Even this isn’t entirely accurate. The interplay and challenge between these elements allows for a greater song than it would otherwise be.
And in 2129 I’m going to meet you in a cantina in Carleta
I’m gonna put Bessie Smith on the Jukebox all night long
When the Spanish sun comes up on our empty cups
I’m gonna take you dancing deep down into the dawn
One bright morning when we meet St. Peter
I ain’t gonna give a damn if he don’t let us in
Or maybe I’m just a damned romantic.
—–
Related: Alabama 3 - Exile on Coldharbour Lane
Get a second opinion!
[official] [allmusic]
[Video - Too Sick to Pray]
