Photo Credit: Sara Bill
Alabama Shakes, as music fans who pay avid attention to Grammy nominations, radio playlists and hot new things probably know, are a band. But considering the occasional state-named musicians throughout the years—from Arizona Dranes to Utah Phillips—somebody who pays less close attention could easily mistake this plural band for a singular singer, especially given the star power of the Shakes’ lead singing guitarist Brittany Howard. Her emotionally effusive style feeds from rhythm and blues and soul-gospel, and she’s less given to wailing as she is testifying. Howard’s intermittent vocal resemblance to Janis Joplin may have been instrumental in her band landing their label deals, but a tonal and emotional elasticity recalling a gamut running from Billie Holiday to Macy Gray also informs her unique phrasing.
So it’s easy to hear why Shakes’ star has risen so rapidly since their national 2012 debut. Howard offers familiar influences in a unique reconfiguration, but so do her fellow musicians. Their amalgamation of blues, ’60s Southern soul, Brill Building melodicism, calypso and punk rawness makes for a kind of roots rock that sounds at once in the lineage of what preceded them and just alien enough from it all to set the band apart. That sort of stylistic generosity, as well as Howard’s magnetically gregarious stage presence, made for enough rationale to have the first few rows of seats removed to create a more communal setting in which to experience her group’s 22 songs.
Those included pretty much all of their gold sales-certified 2012 debut, Boys & Girls as well as a substantial portion of its follow-up, Sound & Color, releasing next month. Howard didn’t offer much in the way of explanations nor inspirations of the song craft, instead limiting most of her few asides to expressions of how happy she is to be back in Milwaukee and making sure the full house of an audience was having a good time. The one time she prefaced a new number with a bit of a prologue, she bemoaned the plight of a friend in jail who’s prone to never do right, adding that if anyone in the crowd didn’t have a similar friend, they must be the one given to misbehaving. With the assurance of someone knowing that she and the company she keeps have continued success on their way, she didn’t bid her listeners goodbye, but “See you next time.”
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Alabama Shakes’ openers gave them serious competition in terms of stage energy. Mali’s Songhoy Blues, comprised of musicians escaping the Islamic extremism overtaking the north of their nation, play an invigorating, psychedelic and danceable blues rock that incorporates their land’s indigenous rhythms. Though leader Garba Touré’s exhortations to the throng to move along with him and bits of his back story were in English, lyrics in his native language raised no barrier to understanding the joyous liberation of their music. They set a festive note for the headliners to follow up on.
