Review: Alabama Shakes – Sound & Color

Things have happened pretty quickly for roots rock band Alabama Shakes and their rise to stardom. The group formed in Limestone County, Alabama, and has gone from relative obscurity to playing iconic venues like Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and Coachella within just a few years. But if you ask guitarist Heath Fogg, bassist Zac Cockrell, drummer Steve Johnson, and lead vocalist and guitarist Brittany Howard, they are level-headed with their response that as musicians this is what they’ve been working towards. This level of success, while expected of such refined, deeply soulful talent, is still a surprising part of the journey for them. Some days it feels like a ton of constant moving parts with a schedule of touring and promo appearances that are nonstop. At other times, it’s clear that this is just the way it is for the group after three Grammy nominations for their debut album, Boys & Girls in 2012, which represented exactly where the band was musically early in their career. The follow-up album, Sound & Color, is a more explorative body of work recorded in Nashville like the first project. In this newest collection of music, the only pressure the band has felt is what they’ve put on themselves to be better performers and write songs that are more relevant to where they are now.

It is easy to pigeonhole Alabama Shakes as a rock group and point to any number of legends as the source of their musical identity. However, let them tell it, inspiration lies in any type of music that has ever caught their individual or collective ear. They’re citing a great range of musical history that makes it hard to nail down any one style of music as their biggest influence. But the power and sheer emotion behind their sound, largely due to Brittany Howard’s tremendous depth as a vocalist, gives them an authentic roots rock vibe that is hard to diminish. For Sound & Color, they’ve vividly explored more with the process of song creation, taking their process in a direction that fans will surely appreciate. The material is from a genuine place, with lyrics and music conceptualized by Brittany and delivered in the most robust of ways by the rest of the band.

A few songs like “Gimme All Your Love”, a slow drawl of a tune that was more of an accident that happened to be recorded from a rehearsal years earlier, and the irony-tinged “Miss You” had been around for a while. Other songs came together during studio sessions. “The Greatest” started off as a softer, slower ballad that they weren’t having much luck with until a hyper reinterpretation was suggested, and speeding it up immensely had a drastic impact on the song’s album version. “Over My Head” was the last song recorded and it has a distinct moody emotion that feels experimental and vulnerable especially in the details, both vocally and instrumentally. But perhaps the most moving song on the album is “Gemini” which takes the listener inside of an arc of trippy dream state, layered by Howard’s mystifying lyrics and tortured reverbed vocals. The album as a cohesive unit gels nicely, which may be why, after listening to the song “Sound & Color” for the first time, the group immediately decided that this should be the first track on the album and the natural title of the whole project. As is to be expected of Alabama Shakes, there is certainly a spectrum of sounds and colors on this album, with a range of songs to anticipate experiencing in a live concert.

 
Written by Mai Perkins

Originally from Los Angeles, Mai Perkins is living a genuine bona fide love affair with NYC and the music that keeps its spirit moving. While spending the majority of the last decade in Brooklyn, many of her adventures around the globe are documented on her blog: Mai On The Move! www.MaiOnTheMove.com

 
Author’s rating for Sound & Color

Pop Magazine’s official rating for Sound & Color

Rating key
MASTERPIECE a must-have
SUPERB for heavy rotation
EXCELLENT a great achievement
VERY GOOD a respectable result
GOOD worth checking out
FAIR an average outcome
WEAK not convincing stuff
BAD an underwhelming effort
VERY BAD quite a waste
FAIL a total failure