Album: Alabama 3 Revolver Soul (Hostage)

As before, Alabama 3 play fast and loose here with the imagery of religious belief, opening Revolver Soul with the humid, stifling menace of "Oh Christ" and romantic baptism of "She Blessed Me", before hitting the dark side of the street to hymn the "downtown queen" hooker "Jacqueline".

The dominant musical mode is their trademark swamp-funk, heard at its best on "Bad to the Bone", where they drag a mouldering blues cliché into the modern world; but there are the usual country touches and, on "Fix It", an earthy variant of the voguish 80s retro-electropop featuring Shane MacGowan's inimitable mumble. Their political bent, meanwhile, is most prominently displayed on "Vietnamistan", which borrows Country Joe's "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" in its depiction of cartoon characters as casualties of war.

Download this: Bad to the Bone; Vietnamistan; All God's Children; Jacqueline