St. Paul & The Broken Bones ★★★ The Alien Coast ATO. CD/DL/LP

Alabama octet offer “Fever dream convergence of soul and psychedelia, stoner metal and funk.”

Inspired by everything from Greek mythology to dystopian sci-fi to 17thcentury Italian sculpture, this Birmingham, AL group’s fourth LP journeys far off-piste. The thread that binds is frontman Paul Janeway’s falsetto, a formidable thing which seems to channel Charles & Eddie’s Charles Pettigrew. Guitarist Browan Lollar is a deft and imaginative colourist across the album’s melange of styles, and a brace of atmospheric, texture-rich postcards (Popcorn Ceiling; Love Letter From A Red Roof Inn) conjure Prince circa Around The World In A

Day. If the forward-looking, ever exploratory production just occasionally outguns the songwriting (Tin Man Love lacks coherence, not a heart), Daft Punk-ish floor-filler The Last Dance is unimpeachable, a defiant shimmy toward the apocalypse. “I don’t care if people watching me think I’m kind of strange”, sings Janeway, appealingly lost in music.