Almost immediately after introducing Alabama Shakes in tasteful retro-soul style, Brittany Howard defied categorization. Her band's Grammy-winning 2015 album, Sound & Colorborrowed from meters as far-reaching as Y2K post-punk, Erykah Badu and Portishead, but was Howard's debut solo album in 2019, Jaime, where her experimentation really blossomed. His sound oscillated between quiet torch songs and raucous proclamations that blended funk-rock with electronica, bound together by stunning lyrics drawn from Howard's biography. Now what, recorded during the pandemic in Shawn Everett's studio, is a different beast. Its subject matter is more gestural and existential – a love gone wrong, a plea for peace, a bout of depression in the near future. It feels both looser and smarter, the work of a healthy nerd with a stadium-sized fanfare and grab-bag approach.
Now what opens quite calmly, with crystal singing bowls and some tentative piano chords and cymbal hits, as Howard recounts her terror. “But will I know it?/Will I feel it?/The first moment I see it?” she sings, her voice layered over her in a veiled echo. Then, with a swirling synth and a blast of drums, it's gone, unraveling in the atmosphere, calling out bygone soul, blues, funk, jazz, psychedelia and house music. If Howard's lyrics suggest she's still working things out, her music sounds like she's got it all figured out. Every song here, even the slow track, is gigantic and propulsive—a grand celestial tour de force of rock and R&B, led by one of the few singers and multi-instrumentalists with the range and intuition to pull it off.
Howard studied at the Stevie Wonder school to get a groove out of just about anything, thanks in part to her rhythm section here, drum virtuoso Nate Smith and versatile Alabama Shakes bassist Zac Cockrell. “I Don't” builds around a melancholic chip-punk-soul hook in Cam'ron's vein. “Patience” transforms from a typical slow jam into a dazzling showcase of distorted keyboard effects. at least one song features Howard hitting a trash can. There's the muscular, airtight funk-rock of the title track, the frenetic boxed-in percussion of “Red Flags” and a big house swing on “Prove It to You.” However, some of the album's most inspired selections have no beat at all. Between almost every piece, the singing bowls return, played by sound bath practitioners Ann Sensing and Ramona Reid, providing a brief respite and seal Now what together as spiritual glue.
