“You shouldn’t feel guilty to be loved…”
Brittany Howard spiritually communes with John Mulvey.
Why did you decide to make a solo record this time?
“The subject matter, it’s more personal. It’s really hard to give away something you have a complete vision for. And in the Shakes we’re a democracy: we all bounce ideas off each other, and things change and get better. With this, I was curious what it would be like to leave things in their rawest form.”
What do you mean by it being more personal?
“I’m leading more with my heart and less with my mind. With Sound & Color, everything was veiled. A song like Dunes was really about depression, but I never would say it. On this one I’m talking about religion pretty blatantly. I’m talking about sexual preference pretty blatantly. Talking about racism in Goat Head. Just talking about my life. There’s really no need for a veil.”
Georgia is one of the more revealing songs: you’ve never written about sexuality before so explicitly…
“I wrote it in California, in Topanga. There was a heatwave, and I was reading this article about Georgia Anne Muldrow, and I noticed she works with everyone I like. I was like, Man, I wonder if Georgia knows who I am? And then I started chanting, ‘I just want Georgia to notice me,’ while I was making a sandwich. And I’m like, Oh my God, this is a song – I have to go put the song down right now. I ran out to the little greenhouse where I was recording and started fleshing the song out, and it became about having this innocent childhood love crush on an older girl and not being able to really understand the feelings or contain the feelings.”
Is the crush based on a true story?
“No, not really. I don’t think I really came to terms with who I fully was until I was 25 or 26. But I imagine it’s the same thing, and I noticed there weren’t really songs like that. So I wanted to write one.”
Is He Loves Me a direct admission of your faith?
“I am definitely not into organised religion, but I’m definitely a spiritual person, and when my sister got sick and passed away, my whole family was ripped away from the church. We all were questioning why God would do something like this. I had a very gothic period in my life: from years eight to 20, I was very unsure about the whole God thing. And then when The Alabama Shakes started happening, and I got to travel and meet new people and experience incredible things, I started having this relationship with something higher, greater, other. It made me feel so much more positive and aware of my own spiritual being.”
You talk about how He still loves you even when you’re smoking blunts and drinking too much. Is that an admission of religious guilt or an expression of how tolerant your God is? “It’s both. Because when I grew up in church, there were a lot of things that would send you to Hell. I thought, If He’s an all-loving, all-powerful God like everyone is telling me, why would me getting drunk on a regular basis bar me from the Pearly Gates? You shouldn’t have to feel guilty to be loved. It’s really ridiculous.”