Sometimes I enjoy music without completely getting it\u2014it grabs me in a visceral way, but it\u2019s just so different in some respect that it\u2019s harder to parse and comprehend what I\u2019m hearing.<\/p>\n
That reality came to mind during my first listen to Alabama Shakes\u2019 Sound & Color<\/i>, an album that takes classic Southern styles\u2014soul, r&b, blues, and rock\u2014stuffs them in a blender, and pours out rainbows. Not liquid rainbows; ACTUAL rainbows. Sound & Color<\/i> takes these familiar genres and says \u201cYeah, those are some cool building blocks, but check out how we turn them into something no one has ever heard before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alabama Shakes were already a big deal when this sophomore album came out in 2015. Their 2012 debut Boys & Girls<\/i> reached number six in the U.S. and earned three Grammy nominations, including Best New Artist. With expectations high, the band\u2014Brittany Howard (vocals), Heath Fogg (guitar), Zac Cockrell (bass), and Steve Johnson (drums)\u2014delivered an album that topped its predecessor in creativity, if not commercial success. Sound & Color<\/i> isn\u2019t so much an album as an experience, a sidestep into an alternate musical universe in which all the normal rules have been suspended.<\/p>\n
The captivating Howard\u2019s lyrics feel like passionate free-form poetry, with meaning largely left open to interpretation even as her delivery overwhelms with emotion. Meanwhile Fogg, Cockrell and Johnson, with assistance from touring keyboard player Ben Tanner, twist familiar forms into new and unexpected shapes.<\/p>\n
Heralding all that\u2019s coming, the album\u2019s kickoff title track opens with a vibraphone solo (!) that gradually adds drums, bass, vocals, and guitar, never progressing beyond a sort of hypnotic, bluesy chant. \u201cDon\u2019t Wanna Fight\u201d feels like old-school gospel-influenced r&b that\u2019s been injected with pure adrenaline, its strutting chords nearly blown off the stage by Howard\u2019s explosive lead vocal. Then \u201cDunes\u201d delivers heavy blues-rock, a Black Keys influence evident in the bruising guitar and outsized, cymbal-heavy drumming, but leaning to psychedelia with its hazy production and woozy wind-down finish.<\/p>\n
Things only get more untethered and unpredictable as you move into the middle of the album. \u201cFuture People\u201d layers a halting, hypnotic beat over a hyperactive guitar line, before \u201cGimme All Your Love\u201d electrifies with grinding, explosive blues for 2:30, at which point the song shifts 180 degrees into a driving soul-rock segment that reframes the melody entirely, before melding the two arrangements into one like a mad alchemist. As if momentarily spent, the Shakes then turn to \u201cThis Feeling,\u201d an acoustic blues backlit with glowing gospel organ.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuess Who\u201d offers a midtempo, chiming fugue, leading into \u201cThe Greatest,\u201d a propulsive blues-rock eruption that feels an awful lot like the \u201cmaximum r&b\u201d imagined by The Who; Howard\u2019s sassy cackle at the end is the cherry on top. \u201cShoegaze\u201d feels like a lost Janis Joplin number, all classic-rock thrummy, and then \u201cMiss You\u201d starts out like a lounge blues number with sing-songy guitar chords and swishing hi-hat before blowing up at the chorus like a propane tank in a wildfire.<\/p>\n
Penultimate track \u201cGemini\u201d offers a delirious contrast between chiming vibraphone and sustain-heavy, fuzzed-out guitar, an extended, six-minute-plus psychedelic blues-gospel-soul fantasia. Finally, the album closes out with \u201cOver My Head,\u201d a rather contemplative complement to the Fleetwood Mac song of the same name, another lyric about a love so big that it makes you feel like you\u2019re losing control. Here the twist they throw in is a quirky, hitching tempo and arrangement.<\/p>\n
Sound & Color<\/i> feels like a head trip to an alternate universe where Billie Holliday fronted a band made up of Jimi Hendrix and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, and at some point in the proceedings they all did a hit of the same stuff the Beatles were on while recording Sgt. Pepper\u2019s<\/i>. The thing is, whatever genre-busting musical shenanigans Alabama Shakes is up to at any given moment, the band is tight as hell, with the wildly charismatic Howard\u2019s powerhouse voice as its center of gravity. However odd or different the individual songs can sometimes feel, they are consistently compelling, thieves of attention that may just steal your heart as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10570],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-45997","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-alabama-shakes","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45997"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45997"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}