Colourful Sound
The title track for Alabama Shakes’ latest sums up their second
album trajectory at its best: taking soul inflections to original places, the
falsetto vocal here partnered to vibraphone vibes that provide that engaging
element of surprise. Production values prevail, the sweeping strings taking the
song to its quick but lush close. Second track Don’t Wanna Fight places the funky squeal
of Brittany Howard’s vocal to the fore before the rest of the song’s funk joins
the upbeat party. Future People –
listen here – has such a spunky opening with its popping beats, and then that
sweet falsetto ascends from such an angelic height to confirm in these first
four tracks that the band is moving beyond its rock soul to quite complex and
textured songwriting. Such sparkling beauty in this track. Fifth Gimme All Your Love slows to the caressing
essence of soul balladry when injections of pumping beats rock you from your meditation
– the song rising ultimately to a fuzzed conclusion and a final four stabs of
that pulse. The tease continues: sixth This
Feeling is sweetly simple and balladic again, Howard singing poignantly
over acoustic guitar, but here the quiet is sustained with muted drum and light
finger clicks adding gentle texture and no explosions of tangential sounds.
This is genuinely pretty, those strings once again lushly layering. Then eighth
The Greatest punks it out! Satisfying
for those who want variety; I’m happy to stay wrapped in the soul surprises. Miss You brings us back to being so
wrapped, a climatic soul standard in sound which follows a pattern of slowing
and then building on emotive vocal spurts. Eleventh Gemini plays with psychedelia a la Funkadelic but again with its
own modern take. The album closes on Over
My Head with playful and expanding vocal harmonies over another soul
ballad, this combination of familiar and new consolidating the band’s and this
album’s speciality.
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