About

Alabama Shakes are a double rarity in being both absolutely aptly named and absolutely deserving of all their hype. The Jack White-endorsed quintet come from a small town in Alabama. More importantly, they not only shake but also rattle, roll and do everything else to ears and body that the most rumbustious soul-rock and roots music can. However galvanising the licks and riffs of her bandmates, it's 22-year-old frontwoman Brittany Howard and her gloriously sandpaper voice that fire this engine: mighty and crackling enough to warrant thoughts of Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin. — (via The Guardian)

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The album is largely confessional — not in the singer/songwritery sense, but in that it's riddled with admissions that probably wouldn't have been made by any other means, words that feel lighter sung than spoken. Album opener and lead single "Hold On", its central guitar riff ribboning and pooling like slow-poured honey, is the first of many tracks where it's not entirely clear if Howard is singing to, about, or as herself, God, or some boy as she rips through the chorus: "Yeah, you got to wait/ But I don't want to wait!" "I feel so homesick/ Where is my home?" Howard wonders on "Rise to the Sun" before the song dips into a coda of timorous guitar and crashing drums. On the shadowy, fingersnapped "Goin' to the Party" she sings about running around town, getting wasted, and taking care of some drunk boy; when she woozily coos, "gotta take me back now, I'm still somebody's daughter," she sounds half-annoyed and half-comforted in that very particular way that comes from being young and restless and knowing there's someone waiting up for you, but at least there's someone waiting up for you.

Howard's pain feels raw, but like it won't always be — as if once these first scrapes heal, her skin will be good and tough, but right now they smart like hell. "Heartbreaker" is staggering, gut-punched, a shiny organ weeping and straining away as she laments, "Oh, I wanted to grow old with you/ You told me so, but then you go/ How was I supposed to know?" But later on the slow-boiling "Be Mine" she's regained her footing-- she's direct, nearly petulant: "If they wanna fight/ They done started fucking with the wrong heart." Three minutes in the song shifts focus to a single demand, Howard crowing and screaming, "Be my baby, be my baby!" over and over as the band spins out, crashing and bumping, then circles back home as she loosens into a string of cries and hoots. — (via Pitchfork)

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Boys & Girls is a short album that clocks in at 35-minutes over the course of 11 songs. But by the time it’s done, you’ll want to start it over again. Alabama Shakes have gathered much attention over the past few months, and even though this is the band’s debut album, we can expect them to stick around. — (via BPM)

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— 2LP, Pressed on Cloudy Clear vinyl
— Repackaged in a foil-board gatefold jacket
— Includes new photos and a raw and explosive set for KCRW