Feasting on Southern soul food
Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard has a voice to sate your hunger for real music, writes Grant Smithies.
BRITTANY HOWARD is screaming on a Paris hotel balcony. I mean, really belting it out, loud and shrill, howling like a female James Brown.
Some of the notes are so high, I imagine them turning the heads of passing poodles on the pavement below.
‘‘Oh, you like that intro, huh?,’’ she says. ‘‘It’s like – Sqeeeeeeeeeal! Unh! Uhh-huh! Yoowwl! Well, yeah. I like that bit, too.’’
The Alabama Shakes frontwoman has just arrived in Paris, and she’s already making more than enough noise to freak out the locals. ‘‘Nah, man. It’s OK. Anyone down on the street probably just thought it was a screeching cat!’’
Now this, my friends, is a singer. In these days of relentless hyperbole, where even the most mediocre warbler on X Factor NZ is lauded as a ‘‘superstar’’, an ‘‘amazing talent’’, a ‘‘true artist’’, this woman is all three, piled on a plate and slathered in hot gravy. To hear her sing is to be served up a giant helping of Southern soul food with all the trimmings, the ingredients drawn from all over the musical menu. Soul, funk, prog rock and jazz. Pop, punk and the blues. Dig right in – this is the kind of rich, spicy, satisfying music that’ll really put some meat on your bones. You will most definitely be going back for seconds. On the second Alabama Shakes album, Sound & Color, released last week, there’s a song called Gimme All Your Love, in which Howard simultaneously channels the sad-heavy-sexy spirits of Billie Holiday, Led Zeppelin and Prince. If you want your mind blown, check out the YouTube clip of her singing it on Saturday Night Live.
‘‘Oh, yeah, that’s a tune where I put a lot of things I love into the one song. It worked pretty good, didn’t it? This album’s much more experimental than our first one, and being brave has really paid off, I think. We tried a lot of new things this time around.’’
Formed in 2009 in Athens, Alabama by Howard and schoolmate Zac Cockrell, Alabama Shakes started out like high school bands everywhere: copying their record collections while they honed their chops, bashing out rough-and-ready Otis Redding, Rolling Stones and AC/DC covers at any dive bar that would have
‘Nah, man. It’s OK. Anyone down on the street probably just thought it was a screeching cat’
them. With the addition of guitarist Heath Fogg and drummer Steve Johnson, the fourpiece released a promising EP in 2011, while Howard still worked a day job as a postie.
A year later, debut album Boys And Girls blew things wide open for them, leading to huge stadium and festival gigs, high-profile television spots, endorsements from Bob Dylan and Jack White. But that album’s vintage sound also saw them pidgeonholed as a nostalgia act: a hipster-friendly blues band, a gang of backwardlooking Southern soul revivalists.
‘‘Oh, yeah, that’s for sure,’’ says Howard with a sigh. ‘‘In every interview, they were like – ‘Oh, so you’re a retro band.’ But, really, we make music that reflects what we listen to, filtered through who we are. On our first record, we took blues and soul things we loved and added all kinds of other genres in there, like kids do. But this time we finally had the chance to go places we’d never been before, and take y’all with us.’’
You’d have to say they succeeded. Recorded in Nashville with producer Blake Mills, Sound & Color is both wilder and more subtle than its predecessor, stomping and squalling one minute and whispering the next, with diversions into some of the stranger back alleys of country, gospel and psychedelia, adding a welcome sense of adventure to their foundation soul-blues template. It’s a roots record that somehow manages to sound very modern, the righteous cosmic funk of Psychedelic Shack-era Temptations supercharged with the raw power of garage rock.
Howard’s voice never loses its intensity, remaining just as convincing whether she’s transmitting a slow-burning vulnerability or channelling pure rage. The lyrics are sharper, too, this time around. The album’s lead single Don’t Wanna Fight recalls the kind of cunningly personalised social commentary we once heard from the late Chicago soul singer, Curtis Mayfield.
‘‘Well, you know, I’m real glad you say that. I love Curtis; he was such a great songwriter, a killer arranger, an amazing guitarist. He really encouraged me to think outside what a normal song sounded like, with his lyrics, his string arrangements, the courage of his lyrics. If there was ever a fire in my house, I’d grab all my Curtis records first as I ran out the door, then I’d go back and grab my Erykah Badu and Gil Scott Heron records. Actually, I’d wanna take everything. Man, I’d need a truck!’’
The new album, she says, followed a period of deliberate reassessment. Now that they had a global platform, what should they do with it? How did they want to sound, now that a lot more people were likely to hear them?
‘‘We had a year off to think about what we were all excited by, and decided the most important thing was to be artistically fearless, no matter what. That might lose us some fans, but also gain us a bunch of new ones. Most of these new songs are mood pieces rather than anything designed to be a radio hit. There are no straight-ahead love songs, just a series of personal storylines, some of which put you in a very unexpected headspace. It makes me feel good that we’re capable of doing something that’s more ambitious but still draws you in deep. It helps that we’re better players now, too. We’ve done so much touring, we’re really intuitive in how we play off each other now, improvising like a jazz band.’’
Reviews for the new album have already been strong, but what do reviewers know? With the last record, they spent much of their time trying to frame Howard as her generation’s Janis Joplin. ‘‘I know! Weird, huh? I might be loud and sorta husky, but I don’t sound anything like Janis. Really, the singers who inspire me most are people I have no chance of sounding like, like Louis Prima or Aaron Neville. You ever listen to Aaron Neville sing Ave Maria? That might be the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard.’’ Howard opens up her throat and emulates Neville’s otherworldly vibrato, no doubt alarming a few more passing Parisians. ‘‘Really, I just admire singers who do their thing, no matter what, without caring about the market. Money should not inspire you as an artist, in any way whatsoever.’’
And with that, it’s time for Howard to descend from her balcony and head out for lunch. It’s clear a croissant just ain’t gonna cut it. Born and raised in the South, Howard favours the hearty comfort food she grew up on. Her favourite? Pork crackling baked inside cornbread, which sounds like a heart-stopping mess of grease and cholesterol to me.
‘‘Oh, man, no. It really is delicious. That’s a real Southern tradition, like oxtail or chicken feet. Not everybody nowadays knows how to make it. I mean, people my age, now we eat couscous, or quinoa. Man, I hate quinoa! Give me crackling cornbread any day. It’s really special when someone makes it for you, all rich and buttery, in a bowl with some buttermilk on it. You would love it, believe me. Food’s like music, man – the best stuff can change your life.’’