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General On Sale: Friday, October 20 @ 10 AM CSTTheres a double meaning to the title of What Now, the revelatory new album from singer/songwriter Brittany Howard. With the world were living in now, it feels like were all just trying to hang onto our souls, says the Nashville-based musician and frontwoman for four-time Grammy Award-winning Alabama Shakes. Everything seems to be getting more extreme and everyone keeps wondering, What now? Whats next? By the same coin, the only constant on this record is you never know whats going to happen next: every song is its own aquarium, its own little miniature world built around whatever I was feeling and thinking at the time. With five Grammy wins and sixteen nominations, Howard follows up her massively acclaimed solo debut Jaimea 2019 LP that landed on best-of-the-year lists from the likes of Pitchfork, the New York Times, and Rolling Stone with What Now, drawing an immense and indelible power from endless unpredictability. Over the course of its 12 tracks, Howard brings her singular musicality to a shapeshifting sound encompassing everything from psychedelia and dance music to dream-pop and avant-jazza fitting backdrop for an album whose lyrics shift from unbridled outpouring to incisive yet radically idealistic commentary on the state of the human condition. At turns galvanizing, cathartic, and wildly soul-expanding, the result is a monumental step forward for one of the most essential artists of our time. Like Jaime (whose celebratory single Stay High earned a Grammy for Best Rock Song), What Now finds Howard taking the helm as producer and working closely with engineer/co-producer/co-mixer Shawn Everett (Beck, The War on Drugs). Recorded at the legendary Sound Emporium and the historic RCA Studio B in Nashville, the album emerged through a deliberately free-flowing process, with Howard doubling down on the unfettered creativity thats long defined her work. I dont ever plan too deeply, but usually I show up with the songs almost fully formed, she says. With this record there was a lot of exploring sounds on the spot, and trusting that the right thing would come to us. Despite that highly exploratory approach, many of the songs on What Now unfold in intricate and hyper-inventive arrangements rooted in complex rhythm patterns, achieved with the help of musicians like Paul Horton (keys), Lloyd Buchanan (keys), Brad Allen Williams (Guitar), drummer Nate Smith (Fearless Flyers, Vulfpeck, Paul Simon), and Alabama Shakes bassist Zac Cockrell. All the sounds on this album are analog, all the drums are real drums, Howard points out. Theres so many different structures and tones happening within the songs that it ended up being a real monster to mix, but we figured it out. In a way its shocking to me how it all came together.
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