Product Overview
In the year after the arrival of Alabama Shakes’ breakout debut Boys & Girls, frontwoman Brittany Howard built a spaceship in her basement. Tasked with writing songs for the band’s hugely anticipated follow-up, the then-25-year-old found herself overwhelmed by self-doubt and, in hopes of shaking up her creative energy, fashioned a spacecraft out of duct tape and a pile of instruments she’d spray-painted silver. Before long, Howard had dreamed up and demoed what she later described as “an R&B-inspired song about a man who gets lost in space”—the hushed and rapturous title track to Alabama Shakes’ sophomore effort Sound & Color, a body of work that perfectly simulates the sensation of being set gloriously adrift.
Released in April 2015, Sound & Color landed with an immediate and massive impact: along with debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and earning four nominations at the 2016 Grammy Awards (including Album of the Year), the 12-song masterpiece drew abundant critical acclaim, with Pitchfork hailing it as “stadium soul with one eye peeking toward another galaxy while hands and feet and throats desperately try to suss out life here on Earth.” And though the album bears many of the hallmarks of Alabama Shakes’ 2012 debut—Heath Fogg’s masterfully expressive guitar work, the kinetic and gritty rhythms of bassist Zac Cockrell and drummer Steve Johnson, Howard’s force-of-nature vocal delivery—Sound & Color ultimately marked a profound evolution from its predecessor’s revivalist soul. “I didn’t like the idea of recreating the sound of Boys & Girls,” Howard says now. “There was so much more to us than that.”
Tracklist:
Side A - Original album:
1. Sound & Color
2. Don’t Wanna Fight
3. Dunes
4. Future People
Side B - Original album:
5. Gimme All Your Love
6. This Feeling
7. Guess Who
8. The Greatest
9. Shoegaze
Side C - Original album plus two bonus songs:
10. Miss You
11. Gemini
12. Over My Head
13. Drive By Baby (bonus song)
14. Joe (bonus song)
Side D - All new bonus material:
15. Someday (b-side/unreleased)
16. Don’t Wanna Fight (Live from Capitol Studio A)
17. Future People (Live from Capitol Studio A)
18. Dunes (Live from Capitol Studio A)
19. Over My Head (Live from Capitol Studio A)
