Three's a crowd for the Alabama 3

ALABAMA 3 just don’t make any sense.Rolling out dirty Southern blues riffs flavoured with rock, leavened with funk and fuelled by killer dance beats, they tick all the boxes and none.

They are the most American of bands – all firebrand-preacher lyrics, dusty boots, cowboy hats, dark glasses and country swagger – and the least, actually born out of the dance clubs and late night drinking dens of Brixton.

They shouldn’t work, but ever since this renegade bunch of South Londoners, who set out to put some soul into acid house (or maybe acid into soul) have become an unstoppable juggernaut of attitude, riffs and dub beats.

First grabbing our attention when their epic Woke Up This Morning was used as the theme tune for The Sopranos, this constantly mutating collective continue to pack out clubs with devoted fans, without really bothering the mainstream.

“Would we love major commercial success, stretch Limos and a gaggle of women on our arms?” laughs frontman Larry Love. “Sure, why not? But it’s not going to happen. But then we’ve always been about not fitting in, and that gets you into interesting places.

“We are still rolling along, in other words. We’re toxic athletes, and the party hasn’t stopped yet, not by a long shot.”

Fourteen years in, they are indeed still going strong, in charge of their own destinies and with their own studio, Brixton venue, and label, Hostage Music.

They got there on their own terms, says Larry, and that DIY ethos is what keeps them going.

Or is it? “To be honest with you, we haven’t got a clue what’s going on most of the time,” he says, honestly.

“In fact, I don’t even know what day it is right now. But then that’s the very essence of intelligence, right? You don’t know what’s going on, but you find your way anyway, you locate the method in your madness.”

He snorts. “Somehow, it works for us.”

Next Thursday the Alabama 3 road trip rumbles into Oxford for a show at the O2 Academy.

The tour follows the release of latest album Shoplifting 4 Jesus, the follow up to 1997’s Exile on Coldharbour Lane, and 2010’s Revolver Soul.

“It’s a concept album,” says Larry. “We’ve dropped a lot of samples on this record. Well, not samples exactly, but riffs, snatches of melody, and hints of choruses from other songs, and we’ve appropriated them.

“But don’t stitch us up, because what we’ve done here is very much in the jazz tradition. And, besides, there’s honour among thieves, and in every case we’ve walked just the right side of litigation. Okay?”

The result is a spicy gumbo of trans-Atlantic styles and musical mash-ups: country tunes with pounding basslines, bone-crunching rock with drum & bass beats, and floor-trembling dub.

While musicians make a habit of complaining about the state of the industry, Alabama 3’s go-it-alone approach has not just allowed them to ride out the vagaries of the business, but to benefit from the downturn. Larry explains: “While I don’t want to make life any harder for the little woman whose pennies don’t stretch quite so far in the corner shop, the recession can have a beneficial effect on outfits like ours outside of the mainstream.”

He insists record buyers have become more discerning, allowing bands that stay true to their fans to survive.

“Those kinds of soporific Coldplay ballads aren’t going to have quite so much clout today as they did during the Blairite years, because people are less trusting of authority and predictability than they once were. They want something a little different now, a little subversion.”

He goes on: “In this day and age, you have to step up your game, to think outside the box. It keeps you keen and creative.

“Being a musician today is very much like being a musician pre-1900, long before there was anything so crude as a record industry.

“It’s an artisan’s existence, a traveller's life. And, as such, it can be a pretty romantic life. It certainly beats digging ditches, anyway!"

• Alabama 3 play the O2 Academy Oxford next Thursday. Tickets are£20.25 from ticketweb.co.uk