Alabama 3

The miniscule number of you who bought their last album, La Peste, will know that the Alabama 3 have decided to tone down the Southern preacher bit and concentrate on the tunes. It's an attempt to get away from the "novelty band" image, which has resulted in savage critical maulings in the UK, and collective head scratching on the other side of the Atlantic.

Egged on by an almost capacity Vicar St. crowd, they demonstrate again tonight that, live, there's nothing that needs fixing. The Bammies' confidence in their own abilities is demonstrated by them dispensing with their best-known song, 'Woke Up This Morning', first. Determined to match Tony Soprano for besuited menace, mainman Larry Love spits out the words as if his, and everybody else in the building's life depends on it.

The new material works just as well, with 'Wade Into The Water' and 'Mansion On The Hill' both thawing Hank Williams out of cryogenic suspension, and dumping him in the Ministry of Sound. By rights, the country/dance interface shouldn't work, but with Love and his cohorts so obviously in love with both genres, they manage to pull it off.

There's also a political side to the Alabama 3 that manifests itself in the chug-along "change must come from the barrel of a gun" boogie of 'Mao Tse Tung Said', and the Garvaghy Road references which pepper 'U Don't Dance 2 Tekno'.

One suspects that Fidel Castro would like them just as much as the Manics.