If I was in charge of organising the records in HMV –
and, God willing, one day I will be – I would have a
special shelf marked "Holy Shit, Are This Lot Still Going?".
On it I would put Embrace, Stereophonics, and a variety of
other artists who crawled out of the woodwork in that grotty
musical period that was the late 1990s and have been hanging
around like a bad smell ever since.
Right
at the front of this exciting new section would be Alabama
3, whose debut album came out eight years ago now, which
is a very long time to be pretending you’re from South
Carolina if you’re actually from Glasgow. Since then
they’ve written the theme tune to The Sopranos
and headlined a lot of those weird festivals in the middle
of nowhere that nobody goes to.
This,
their latest single, continues their Southern obsession
with a tribute to the late lamented Johnny Cash. It’s
a competent, catchy pastiche, bouncing along at a fair old
rate, cheekily namechecking any number of Cash songs in
the process; sadly, however, it’s not half as good
as the good half of Cash’s last album, nor indeed
‘Johnny Cash’ by Sons & Daughters.
d
