A3’s ‘La Peste’ Reins It In; Lining Up to Honor Springsteen

This maverick British outfit’s 1997 debut album, “Exile on Coldharbour Lane,” was a daring, high-octane mixture of honky-tonk and dance-culture sensibilities that was so extreme it felt downright combustible. But the album went unnoticed in this country until a remix of “Woke Up This Morning” showed up as the theme of HBO’s “The Sopranos.”

In “Exile,” A3 explored sin and salvation in ways that seemed both inspired and outrageous. Sonically and thematically, the music seemed as close to pop anarchy at times as anything since the Sex Pistols.

The band pushed the envelope so far that this collection stands well above most new releases even though leader Rob Love and his cohorts don’t push the boundaries of the first album. It’s as if even they realized they had been operating a bit too far beyond the pop norm.

Where the group (which headlines the Roxy on Nov. 18) did a sensational, show-stopping version of John Prine’s relatively obscure “The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” on “Exile,” they turn in a more predictable reworking of “Hotel California” this time.

However, the three standouts would be essential pieces of an A3 retrospective: “Too Sick to Pray,” “Cocaine Killed My Community” and “Thrills,” a strange sort of salute to sentimental refrains shared by Kris Kristofferson, Leonard Cohen and Johnny Cash.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.