Electric Blue Watermelon is the fourth studio album by American band North Mississippi Allstars. It was released on September 6, 2005, through ATO Records. Recording sessions took place at Ardent Studios and at Sam Phillips Recording Studio in Memphis, Tennessee and at Zebra Ranch in Independence, Mississippi. Production was handled by Jim Dickinson. It features contributions from Lucinda Williams, Robert Randolph, Al Kapone, Othar Turner, Jimbo Mathus, Ben Nichols, Jimmy Davis, Jim Crosthwait, Jim Spake, Steve Selvidge, Susan Marshall, Mary Lindsay Dickinson, John C. Stubblefield, R.L. Boyce, Sharde Turner, Aubrey Turner, Rodney Evans, Otha Andre Evans, Whitney Jefferson, Robert "Tex" Wrightsil, Harold "Sundance" Thomas, Roger Lewis, Kevin Harris, Efrem Towns, Terence Higgins, Julius McKee, Revert Andrews, Jamie McLean and Jim Dickinson.
Electric Blue Watermelon was met with generally favorable reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 79, based on eleven reviews.[1]
Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly found the album "it's sort of like The Allman Brothers Band jamming with the P-Funk All Stars, with LL Cool J guesting".[3]AllMusic's Steve Leggett praised the album, saying: "what they really are is a 21st century version of a good old Southern rock band who know all too well that the hills of North Mississippi are alive with real folk music".[2] Adrien Begrand of PopMatters said that the album "expertly combines elements of the previous three albums with a few cool new additions, making for not only the most diverse concoction of blues and rock the band has recorded to date, but also their best album so far".[4] Veteran critic Robert Christgau said: "They've learned to lilt, or else agreed to let their daddy show them how" and selected two songs: "Hurry Up Sunrise" and "Bang Bang Lulu".[5]
