A record is a narrative—it begins and ends, embodied by lulls and climaxes that tell a story about the musicians and their state of mind.
However, there are some striking records that inspire fans to wonder what the band was thinking when they put it all together.
So what took award-winning Alabama Shakes so long to release its second full-length album?
The Shakes, busy drinking in the glorious backwash from their soulful 2012 album, wrote songs for “Sound & Color” while on tour and during forced daylong sessions in the basement, according to the band’s website.
It sounds like the four-piece put together the compilation while riding a time machine through the last few decades, writing one song per stop.
The result was a diverse and climactic album that some will love and some will despise. Like a diamond—the product of extreme pressure and coal— the album shines with a gaudy luster that, as a package, seems forced.
Guitarist Heath Fogg foreshadowed this electronic-psychedelic-classic emulsion shortly after the release of the band’s last album.
“We just don’t wanna own the classic R&B title and let people down, because when we go electronic on the next record, it might break some hearts,” he told Pitchfork.
And hearts were broken, indeed—the hearts of road-trippers who loved Howard’s white noise over ballads in the background, echoing the rebellious soul movement straight from Athens, Alabama.
The nuanced sounds of the new album induce nostalgia for the band’s first album, “Boys & Girls.” The throng around the album’s soulful and energetic allure gave the new age rock and blues combo its own genre, placing all other similar-sounding bands under its shadow as “Shakes-esque.”
But the Shakes don’t want to be pigeonholed into that typical category of southern R&B soul. This album is a rebellion—with freedom for exploration as the ultimate goal.
“I imagined myself in the situation of the African-American group sin the ‘70s, when synthesizers had just come out and they were making all of this moody stuff,” Howard said in an article posted on the band’s website.
Backed by synthesizers, Howard’s sultry masculine vibrato and spirit-lifting falsetto took the reins of “Sound & Color.” Her hearty voice, injected with electric passion, cues the instruments as opposed to simply following along, accenting distinctive, energized rhythms as heard in the first album.
“Boys & Girls” is much more stylistically uniform. Though the old album is packed with feeling and rhythm, the uniformity of each track required to thread the tracks together become a deafening clangor.
The newest installment in the Shake’s portfolio is diverse and multi-climactic, each song almost completely disconnected in both message and element; however, the problem with critiquing Alabama Shakes this early in the game is that it doesn’t have an identity to look up to.
Though “Sound & Color” is a mind-rattling endeavor to listen to from start to finish, each track has its charm; each a gem with Howard at the forefront, who, in the past three years, has gained incredible control over her instrument of choice, capable of produce the highly varied flavors of tracks in the album:
“Dunes” is reminiscent of late ‘80s hair metal. Howard’s voice spills onto the recording, rolling over bars like, “I don’t know who’s problem it is / I don’t know who’s f—k to give / I’m losing it.”
The title track rings like a Broadway prelude, repeating “sound and color” as Howard lyrically states what seems like the album’s theme, the desperation for love: “I want to touch a human being.”
“Future People” could make a room of indie heads sway, only to be dampened by the hyper-passionate “Gimme All Your Love” that follows.
“The Greatest” begins with a shock of punk rock but after a minute the band settles into the groovy tune, allowing listeners to sigh with relief.
“Guess Who” sounds ‘70s, “Gemini” saturates Howard’s voice with synth and slows the end of the album.
“We really thought about what record we wanted to make, and decided that we didn’t want to do something like ‘Boys & Girls, Part Two,’” Howard said—so sure about what they didn’t want, but the album itself dictates that they were also unsure about what they did want.
After giving it a listen, you just might end up uncertain about what you want from them, as well.
RATING: 3.5 stars out of 5
ALBUM: “Sound & Color”
RELEASED: April, 21, 2015
LABEL: ATO
LENGTH: 47:26