Description
The group’s defining genre, soul, remains, but The Alien Coast treats soul as akin to a backbone: It’s a structural element on which lead vocalist Janeway and his cohorts hang a handful of fresh ideas. This wildly inventive and bold new 4th album by the eight-piece soul band out of Birmingham, Alabama, is a musical phantasm for our times.
Funk makes an appearance on The Alien Coast, and psychedelia wrapped up in reverb, with occasional grindy industrial notes that, true to the album’s name, read as foreign to St. Paul & The Broken Bones’ style. Take “The Last Dance,” for instance, a pure bass-driven groove borrowed from the 1970s; without question, it’s the closest The Alien Coast gets to patting listeners on the back as if to say, “It’s alright.” “Lose yourself in a song that doesn’t make you want to cry / God knows we need it right now,” Janeway purrs, spelling out the record’s aesthetic in just two lines. This only matters if you happen to tune into his lyrics, but “The Last Dance” is such a danceable piece that you’re likely to miss what Janeway’s getting at because you’ll be too busy swiveling your hips.
