Exiled Records

Reviews:

More people care about Britain's A3 than may realize they do. For better or worse, the self-styled country-blues-soul-gospel-funk-techno collective is fused with HBO's wildly popular gangster series "The Sopranos," which picked up "Woke Up This Morning" from its 1997 debut album and deployed it as the show's theme song. But like many cultural injustices it did not translate into massive popularity for A3-which, by rights, should have been massively popular before "The Sopranos" came calling.

But whatever else A3 might think of its commercial fortunes, it has not blunted the troupe's expansive artistic ambitions or creative acumen, as ably proven on its third outing, Power in the Blood. Another genre-splicing opus like its two predecessors, Power in the Blood offers up fierce political and social observations with a groove and, sometimes, some twang. "Don't need no country/ Don't need no flag... Stars and stripes have got me jetlagged" frontmen Larry Love and The Very Reverend Dr. D Wayne sing over the fiddle-filled chorus of "Woody Guthrie," But its sound more than sentiment that sucks the listener into this Power, from the trippy rave-ups like "Strobe Life" and "The Moon Has Lost Its Sun" to the Church of Funkadelic thump of "R.E.H.A.B." and the clubby polyrhythms of "Yellow Rose." A3's magic is in making all this sound perfectly in place next to the back-porch strum of "Let the Caged Bird Sing" and the prayerful soul of "Lord Have Mercy"- as well as the lo-fi snippet of Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska." At once thought-provoking and danceable, Power in the Blood is only the latest chance to wake up to the pleasures of A3.