“I feel the rain but it’s all out of rainbows”
What Now
EMI
FOLLOWING the release of their second album, Sound & Color, Alabama Shakes were slated to scale even greater heights than a US No 1 album and four Grammy Awards. However, Brittany Howard had reached a crossroads. Her decision to step away in 2018 wasn’t a move against the band – “incredible” is how she described the Shakes’ achievements to Uncut – but rather towards creative and personal fulfilment. The wisdom of that move was borne out by Jaime, her 2019 solo debut, which landed as a tour de force of funk, jazzy R&B, soul and blues-edged rock, corralled into songs about everything from racism to a childhood crush on an older girl.
If that stylistic departure both surprised and impressed, Howard has trumped it with the follow-up, a Jaime 2.0 likely to secure her status as an auteur in terms of both conception and execution. It’s a bigger, freer-thinking and more dynamically audacious record; one which uses lessons learned from her debut – chiefly, to forget any fear and trust herself – while uniting her disparate musical loves and, with long-term collaborator Shawn Everett, being more adventurous in arrangements and production. Howard took a relaxed approach, so much so that when she first started writing, in March 2020, she didn’t really know she was making an album.
ALBUM OF THE MONTH 9/10
