NEW ALBUMS
BRITTANY HOWARD
What Now EMI
Unguarded emotion and bolder sonic invention on her solo second.
By Sharon O’Connell
“I feel the rain but it’s all out of rainbows”
FEBRUARY 2024
TAKE 322
1 GRANDADDY (P24)
2 THE SMILE (P29)
3 AZIZA BRAHIM (P32)
4 RYAN DAVIS (P36)
THE UNCUT GUIDE TO THIS MONTH’S KEY RELEASES
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 atour 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 abigger, 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 arelaxed approach, so much so that when she first started writing, in March 2020, she didn’t really know she was making an album.