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Sound & Color (ATO Records) – the follow-up to Alabama Shakes’ Gold-certified debut album, Boys & Girls, which earned the group GRAMMY® nominations in three categories, including Best New Artist– is out today. It is available now at all music retailers, including iTunes and Amazon, and via the band’s website and the ATO Records webstore. Alabama Shakes will celebrate the release of Sound & Color with a performance on the outdoor stage of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” tonight. Earlier in the evening, Alabama Shakes will visit Amoeba Hollywood for a limited album signing. The band is currently on the road and has just added a trio of East Coast dates.
In a new video premiering today, lead singer/guitarist Brittany Howard takes fans behind the scenes to see how the vinyl editions of Sound & Color were handcrafted by the artisans at United Record Pressing (formerly Southern Plastics) in Nashville, TN – the facility that pressed the Beatles’ first U.S. 7″ and groundbreaking albums across all genres. The video can be viewed HERE.
Alabama Shakes co-produced Sound & Color with Blake Millsat Nashville’s Sound Emporium studio. The band previewed the album with listening parties at independent record stores across the nation and NPR Music gave fans a “First Listen” to Sound & Color last week, with NPR critic Ann Powers hailing it as “boundary-leaping.” Check out Alabama Shakes’ recent segment on NPR’s “All Things Considered” HERE.
USA Today named Sound & Color “Album of the Week” and Rolling Stone observed, “This is a weirder, woozier, fiercer and sexier record than their debut in nearly every way.” In this feature, The New York Times Magazine praised the band’s “soul-stirring, shape-shifting new sound.” Billboard awarded the album four stars and said, “Musically speaking, it contains more feats of derring-do than a Cirque du Soleil show, and is erudite enough to excite even the most studious, skeptical ethnomusicologists. But most of all, it’s just fun, and this is no small accomplishment.” “Brittany Howard’s voice is unlike anything you’ve ever heard before-it’s better. Like three different badass singers in one body,” noted Marie Claire. The Chicago Tribune said, “The drama is all in the way she uses her voice – the key instrument on an album brimming with new Shakes sounds and colors.”
Named as one of the highlights of the 2015 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival by critics at Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times and Billboard, Alabama Shakes will spend the summer playing a mixture of headline dates and festivals, including Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Glastonbury, Montreux Jazz Festival, Squamish, T In The Park, Mountain Jam and Field Trip. Opening acts for Alabama Shakes’ headline tour include Father John Misty (May 28 – June 3), Strand of Oaks (June 9) and Courtney Barnett (June 10). Very special guests Drive-By Truckers will be the openers at the August 16 show at Colorado’s legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre show and at three recently announced September dates.
Brittany Howard spoke with Billboard prior to the band’s Coachella debut in this cover story. The Los Angeles Times praised the group’s Weekend One performance, noting, “One of the purest dancing convergences occurred due to the Alabama Shakes’ way with rhythm, tension and release. Unlike most head-nodding Coachella rock crowds, the fans went all in on the dance floor.” At the other end of the spectrum, in a review of Alabama Shakes’ sold-out, two-night stand at NYC’s intimate Beacon Theatre, The New York Times’ Jon Pareles noted, “instead of offering tame new songs in familiar styles, Alabama Shakes is pursuing some molten essence of soul: raw confessions, tensile riffs, extreme tempos and volcanic buildups. ‘Gimme All Your Love,’ a midconcert showstopper, swerved and whipsawed again and again, from the whole band pounding together, down to a spindly lone guitar, into a tender croon, working through a chugging Memphis beat and ratcheting up to Ms. Howard at full scream demanding, ‘Give me all you got, baby!'”
Alabama Shakes will perform in The American Epic Sessions, a feature-length recording studio film that will air in Fall 2015 on PBS and BBC Arena along with American Epic, a three-part historical documentary that explores a time in the late 1920’s when record companies toured America with a recording machine, democratizing music and giving a voice to the poorest in the nation. The music captured by the machine led to the development of blues, country, gospel, Hawaiian, Cajun and folk music and sparked a cultural revolution whose reverberations are felt to this day.View the trailer HERE.
The success of their debut album, Boys & Girls, paved the way for Alabama Shakes – comprising lead singer/guitarist Brittany Howard, guitarist Heath Fogg, bassist Zac Cockrell, drummer Steve Johnson, and touringkeyboard players Ben Tanner and Paul Horton – to become one of the most celebrated live acts in the world, as they delivered unforgettable performances everywhere from intimate venues to the main stages of festivals like Bonnaroo and Glastonbury. Boys & Girls charted in the Top 10 in both the U.S. and the U.K. and”Hold On,”the Gold-certified lead single, wasvoted the #1 Best Song of 2012 by Rolling Stone.
Alabama Shakes – Upcoming Tour Dates
5/3 – Berlin, Germany @ Astra Kulturhaus
5/13 – Birmingham, UK @ O2 Academy Birmingham
5/15 – Brighton, UK @ The Great Escape Festival SOLD OUT
5/16 – Manchester, UK @ O2 Apollo
5/28 – St. Louis, MO @ The Fox Theatre w/very special guest Father John Misty
5/29 – Kansas City, MO @ The Starlight Theatre w/very special guest Father John Misty
5/30 – Minneapolis, MN @ Hall’s Island w/very special guest Father John MistySOLD OUT
6/2 – Indianapolis, IN @ The Farm Bureau Insurance Lawn at White River State Park w/very special guest Father John Misty
6/3 – Detroit, MI @ Masonic Temple Theatre w/very special guest Father John Misty
6/5 – Seaside Heights, NJ @ Gentlemen of the Road Stopover
6/6 – Toronto, ON @ Field Trip Music & Arts Festival
6/7 – Hunter Mountain, NY @ Mountain Jam Festival
6/9 – Charlottesville, VA @ nTelos Wireless Pavilion w/special guest Strand of Oaks
6/10 – Cary, NC @ Koka Booth Amphitheatre at Regency Park w/special guest Courtney Barnett
6/12 – Manchester, TN @ Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival
6/24-28 – Pilton, UK @ Glastonbury
6/27 – Beuningen, Netherlands @ Down The Rabbit Hole
6/28 – Werchter, Belgium @ Rock Werchter
7/1 – Gdynia, Poland @ Open’er Festival
7/4 – Dublin, Ireland @ Marlay Park
7/5 – Belfort, France @ Les Eurockeennes
7/8 – Lucca, Italy @ Summer Festival Lucca
7/9 – Montreux, Switzerland @ Montreux Jazz Festival
7/10 – Rotterdam, Netherlands @ North Sea Jazz Festival
7/12 – Auchterarder, UK @ T In The Park
7/31 – Chicago, IL @ Lollapalooza
8/1 – Council Bluffs, IA @ Harrah’s Council Bluffs Casino & Hotel
*8/4 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Red Butte Garden
8/9 – Squamish, BC @ Squamish Valley Music Festival
8/16 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre w/very special guests Drive-By Truckers
**9/17 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Mann Center for the Performing Arts w/very special guests Drive-By Truckers.
**9/18 – Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion w/very special guests Drive-By Truckers
**9/19 – Forest Hills, Queens, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium w/very special guests Drive-By Truckers
11/18 – London, UK @ O2 Academy Brixton
* Fan club pre-sale is underway now at https://alabamashakes.frontgatetickets.com/ for the August 4 show. Tickets go on sale on April 27 at 7PM to Garden Members and on May 4 at 9AM to the General Public.
** Fan club pre-sale is underway now at https://alabamashakes.frontgatetickets.com/ for the September 17, 18 and 19 shows. Tickets go on sale to the general public on April 25.
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