ALBUM REVIEW: St. Paul & The Broken Bones Blend the Holy and the Humble on ‘The Alien Coast’

When Paul Janeway discovered he had a soul man’s panther scream lurking inside his body, crunching numbers for a living no longer seemed like an option. The former accountant-to-be from Birmingham, Alabama, quit his job back in 2012 to play a gig at SXSW when his boss wouldn’t give him the time off. The soul man persona was so effective that Janeway, by then dubbed St. Paul by his bandmates for his teetotalling ways, was embraced by the legendary Muscle Shoals studio band The Swampers, who invited him to be their singer on Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” at the 2013 debut of the Muscle Shoals documentary.

Like most soul men, Janeway’s gospel upbringing plays a big role in his music, in style and in tone. Raised in a Pentecostal family, he originally wanted to be a preacher, but after high school decided to become a mechanic, switching over to a job as bank teller while studying to be a CPA. But once religion gets into a man’s soul, it’s hard to shake out. That Jesus jones comes out screamin’ about stuff that crosses the aisle, wobbling back and forth between the secular and the celestial.

On the new album from St. Paul & The Broken Bones, The Alien Coast, the opener “3000 AD Mass,” sounds like a backwoods evangelist huntin’ sinners, ready to whomp ’em with a Bible during a heavy metal mass, like Black Sabbath fronted by Wilson Pickett. The locale is a bit fuzzy, but it seems like the singer has found himself cowering in a Vegas hotel room, strung out and broke, wanting the big boy in the sky to rain down fire and brimstone on himself and his fellow degenerates. “Bermejo and the Devil” sounds like Curtis Mayfield with a head full of shrooms, pursued by a red- eyed devil with sharp teeth.

Janeway steps out of church for “Minotaur,” a falsetto narrative name-checking the bull-headed man-beast he says addresses the beast within us that feeds on leftover abuse and makes a bloody mess when it comes out.

“Love Letter From a Red Roof Inn” is an inside look at the glories of show business, Janeway “stuck in a hotel writing shitty songs.” But he keeps that from becoming a tired cliché by finishing out the thought with an endearing missive to a missing loved one: “I know that you’d want me to use another word but I’m not quite the poet that you think I am / I’ll be your cliché … just a fool who fell for you trying to just reach you how I can.”

Even though his original “The Last Dance” has a Donna Summer, late ’70s disco feel, Janeway still manages to keep it churchy by slipping in an endtimes reference and an admonition to get it on while we still can shake it: “End is here / St. Peter lost our names / many sins before the last / let’s move it while we can now.” It’s an interesting tussle to observe as Janeway warbles back and forth between redemption and shakin’ it on the dance floor. But in the end, there’s only one way out. Screw it. Get up off your knees and let’s dance.