Alabama Shakes<\/a>, a remarkable quartet who made it their mission to take distinctly Southern rock and soul and r&b forms and evolve them into something fresh and new. They were, and more recently once again are, musical subversives of the best kind.<\/p>\nFor a time, though\u2014roughly 2017-24\u2014Howard chose to step away from the band. The initial impetus was this set of songs, a deeply personal collection that\u2019s named for Howard\u2019s older sister. Jaime died of retinoblastoma as a young teen, when Brittany Howard was just 10 years old, a traumatic event further amplified by the reality that Jaime was, from a young age, a talented artist who nurtured and inspired Brittany\u2019s own artistic instincts.<\/p>\n
I thought about that story a lot across my first couple of listens to this album, in part because my initial reaction to it was very mixed. There are a number of tracks here that feel less like songs intended to engage with an audience, than creations designed to help the artist work through trauma. I truly hope making Jaime<\/i> served that purpose for Howard\u2026 but it doesn\u2019t make for an easy listen. <\/p>\n
Interestingly, the title is the only element of this album that feels directly addressed to Jaime. The songs mostly explore Howard\u2019s unique identity as the biracial child of an interracial marriage, who came to understand along her path that she is gay. The arrangements tend to be spare and rather haunting; the band here consists of Howard on guitar (plus occasional keys and drums), her Alabama Shakes bandmate Zac Cockrell on bass, Nate Smith on drums, and Robert Glasper on keyboards.<\/p>\n
It’s apparent the album is going to be something very different from the opening seconds of \u201cHistory Repeats,\u201d whose lengthy drum intro prefaces a dive into psychedelic funk, that devolves by the end into a chant\u2014\u201cHistory repeats and we defeat ourselves come on everybody one more time\u201d\u2014that\u2019s repeated so many times it\u2019s both hypnotic and unsettling. If that wasn\u2019t enough of a left turn, the funky blues \u201cHe Loves Me\u201d interpolates a Baptist preacher\u2019s sermon with Howard singing about her particular vision of God: \u201cHe loves me \/ He doesn\u2019t judge me.\u201d It\u2019s\u2026 unusual.<\/p>\n
Batting third, \u201cGeorgia\u201d is downright lovely, a gentle, heartfelt ode to adolescent longing as Howard remembers her own coming of age as a queer woman; a deceptively simple organ solo from guest Lloyd Buchanan leads to an ecstatic crescendo. \u201cStay High\u201d conjures up post-coital bliss, with Howard\u2019s gentle acoustic strums and Glasper on celeste joined by pulsing bass and drums. \u201cI just want to stay high with you,\u201d she sings on a song that\u2019s so intensely committed to its vibe that it starts to feel like a manic episode.<\/p>\n
From there, things only get stranger. \u201cTomorrow\u201d is a discordant soul-funk fugue that devolves into a sort of theater of the mind; I definitely don\u2019t love it, but it\u2019s impressive. \u201cShort And Sweet\u201d feels improvised, with Howard alone, strumming, longing and musing (\u201cI may be a fool to dream of you \/ But God, it feels so good to dream at all\u201d). And \u201c13th Century Metal\u201d is the oddest yet, a dense, cacophonous collision of percussive synths and drums, with Howard\u2019s distorted, exhorting, spoken-word vocals over the top. <\/p>\n
\u201cBaby\u201d feels like another bit of improv, with loose studio chatter diving straight into the song, which is a lurching, sloppy, angry monologue about her lover kicking her out. The dark energy flows even stronger on \u201cGoat Head,\u201d whose off-kilter keys and drums soundtrack a brutal memory of the harassment and abuse her interracial parents experienced. \u201cI\u2019m one drop of three-fifths, right?\u201d she sings on a number that feels more like an exorcism of trauma than a song.<\/p>\n
The light returns for \u201cPresence,\u201d featuring just guest Lavinia Meijer on harp and Howard on drums, guitar and voices; it\u2019s a sweet celebration of connection with another unusual arrangement. Closer \u201cRun To Me\u201d finds Howard delivering a sort of sermon\/soliloquy over spare accompaniment, speak-singing a lyric of devotion and comfort for a loved one.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to grasp how this ended up as a solo album; in addition to its very specific and personal subject matter, Jaime<\/i> makes none of the minor concessions to mainstream melodic sensibilities that Alabama Shakes\u2019 Boys & Girls<\/i> (2012) did (and that 2016\u2019s Sound & Color<\/i> did to a lesser extent). It\u2019s very much its own thing, a genuinely immersive experience.<\/p>\n
Having said all of that, Jaime<\/i> carries undeniable power and honesty and artistry; it\u2019s just a question of whether Howard\u2019s iconoclastic approach works for you. Some will find it engaging, others impressive, and still others may find it off-putting. I totally get why some folks would give Jaime <\/i>an \u201cA\u201d (it was nominated for several awards and made numerous \u201cBest of 2019\u201d year-end lists); it\u2019s raw and fearless to a degree that\u2019s indisputably compelling. For me, though, in the end it was an album that I respected more than enjoyed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[11069],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-47142","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-brittany-howard","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47142","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=47142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51839,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47142\/revisions\/51839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47142"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47142"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}