The Singles Jukebox

In which Katherine maybe RUINS a SURPRISE…

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[6.57]

Dan MacRae: Alabama Shakes: Not just for rock dadz anymore! “Don’t Wanna Fight” has this groove that inspires misguided hip movements and stabs at bringing sex appeal to your denim jacket. Equip it with a bone marrow-melting Brittany Howard vocal and you’ve got something marvellous.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The effects and falsetto suggest Latin Playboys meets Nick Jonas. If adult alternative were still a thing, this would be the thing.
[5]

Anthony Easton: I like this new funk revival — its nostalgia pleases me. This isn’t nearly as polite as, let’s say, “Home.”
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Micha Cavaseno: Break-beat drums played in such a desperate hope of being funky, tedious garagey “riffing,” and soulful testimony. It’s not that Brittany Howard isn’t one thousand times more impressive than your Monkeys/Keys/Jack White’s Latest Overhyped Stompers singers. It’s just that this template is tedious as hell nowadays, and no matter how good you are at a played-out thing, it’s still played out.
[4]

Iain Mew: Totally won over from the moment Brittany Howard enters with a sound like the air being squeezed out from a balloon. Eeeeee!
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Brad Shoup: A good, rutting disco cry. I guess maybe I would’ve guessed that Alabama Shakes doing disco would sound like Exile, but it sounds like actual people getting frustrated in style.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: For someone who used to be as Into Music(TM) as I am, my mother rarely talks to me about the stuff. Every week or so she’ll ask who I’m writing about, quickly append “no one I’ve ever heard of, right?” and I’ll want to fall backward dead into an Onion article, and that’ll mostly be it. But my sister’s husband just got a record player (“back in my day people wanted to get rid of records!”), which demands a supply of albums besides just Beyonce and Johnny Cash; my mom, tasked to buy him a starter set, called me, which led to half an hour’s debate over whether a lad from Liverpool who likes the Beatles, The Temper Trap, the Foo Fighters and the Chili Peppers would get anything at all from B.B. King or the Allman Brothers (“HOW CAN YOU NOT LIKE EAT A PEACH?”). The crux: she was asking herself “what do I think they should hear?” while I was thinking “what do I think they would like?” — which is a question I am incredibly bad at answering. What new music would my mother like? I have no idea. She doesn’t like country. She doesn’t like rap or pop, unless she does (last Christmas she asked me to download “Talk Dirty,” HOW). She doesn’t like most of what’s on rock radio unless it’s classic rock. Would she like Alabama Shakes? The time I played her Throwing Muses and she complained that women just didn’t rock as hard suggests not (normally the sentiment’s not like her; it’s definitely not like that album). The blooziness and genuine heat that “Don’t Wanna Fight” exudes suggests that she might. Maybe I’ll sneak it onto her work playlist next time I’m down there. That’s compliment enough for me.
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