Adrian Quesada Releases “Starry Nights” Featuring Mary Lattimore & Neal Francis, Backed With “Rise of the Have Nots”

Today, Adrian Quesada shares “Starry Nights” and “Rise of the Have Nots,” two new singles and videos that further immerse listeners in the intoxicating, nocturnal noir of Jaguar Sound. Out this Friday, November 18th on ATO Records, the second album of the year from the Grammy-winning guitarist, producer and Black Pumas co-founder is a head-nodding and hypnotic opus, heavily inspired by hip-hop and the unheralded composers of 1970s-era Italian and French film music. On the equally celestial and soulful “Starry Nights,” harpist Mary Lattimore and pianist Neal Francis make special appearances alongside cinematic layers of violin from Alexis Buffum and Quesada’s own bass, guitar and keyboard playing, while “Rise of the Have Nots” erupts into an arrangement of frenzied beats and menacing synth. 

Listen to “Starry Nights” b/w “Rise of the Have Nots,” accompanied by visuals from Telepath Design: https://atorecords-ffm.com/starrynights 

“One of the few positive things that came out of the early pandemic was a reduced human impact on our planet and out of that came some rare and beautiful starry nights,” says Adrian Quesada. “I was inspired to make music that reflected the skies, very much capturing a moment in time.”

On “Rise of the Have Nots” he adds, “I imagined an animated sci-fi film with a revolt against oppression of all kinds and the song plays out like a musical story, climaxing with a long but victorious battle.”

“Starry Nights” and “Rise of the Have Nots” follow the recently released “Noble Metals,” and across the twelve instrumental tracks of Jaguar Sound, Adrian Quesada showcases his singular and signature ability to build a bridge between seemingly disparate worlds of music, driven in part by his experience growing up on the border of multiple countries, cultures and languages. Originally conceived during the onset of the COVID-19 lockdown, Jaguar Sound also paints a musical portrait of a particular moment and set of sonic and emotional obsessions in Quesada’s life, when he’d ride his bike every day after dusk, listening to The Alchemist before cranking out beats that he then turned to song. In addition to Mary Lattimore and Neal Francis, Jaguar Sound features Ikebe Shakedown, keys from David Garza and an array of strings, horns and percussion that were produced, written, engineered and mixed by Adrian Quesada at his own Electric Deluxe studio at home in Austin, TX. 

Jaguar Sound arrives on the heels of Adrian Quesada’s Boleros Psicodélicos LP, which dropped earlier in 2022 and has since led him to performances for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, star-studded sets for the Austin City Limits music festival and PBS program, a Kennedy Center celebration for the Hispanic Heritage Foundation and beyond. A sweeping tribute to his longtime love for the golden age of Latin American balada music, Boleros Psicodélicos saw Adrian Quesada unite an international community of collaborators such as Angelica Garcia, Gabriel Garzón-Montano, Gaby Moreno, Girl Ultra, iLe, Marc Ribot, Money Mark, Tita and numerous others, garnering praise from Rolling Stone, NPR Music, Variety and more. “It is difficult to recreate the magic of a balada, a song of longing popular in the 1970s that defined a generation in Latin America,” says The New York Times. “Adrian Quesada manages to harness the genre’s power.” 

Pre-order Jaguar Sound, and listen to Adrian Quesada in a Guest DJ set on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic 

Primus Announce ‘Primus & The Chocolate Factory with The Fungi Ensemble’ Golden Wrapper Edition

From the mind of Les Claypool comes a twisted reimagining of the 1971 classic, now on golden nugget colored vinyl housed in a deluxe gold foil jacket. In your wildest dreams you could not imagine the marvelous surprises that await you within! In stores December 16, pre-order now.

Primus’ Wonka-themed album Primus & The Chocolate Factory with the Fungi Ensemble, makes something that is truly their own while paying homage to a cinematic classic.“The idea was to combine the Frog Brigade and Primus, and do this record,’ says Claypool. I think like a good portion of the planet, we were all pretty put off by the remake of the ‘Willy Wonka’ movie – the Tim Burton version. I really wanted to pay homage to a film [1971’s ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,’ starring Gene Wilder] that was very important to me as a kid and very influential to me musically. So that’s what we did. And as opposed to just going in and recording the songs and playing them the way they are in the film, we twisted them up a bit…twisted them up a lot.”

Rayland Baxter’s New Album, If I Were A Butterfly, Is Out Now

Rayland Baxter’s If I Were A Butterfly is out today, available on all streaming services and on limited edition pink vinyl exclusively via the ATO store.

For the making of his fourth album, Baxter holed up for over a year at a former rubber-band factory turned studio in the Kentucky countryside—a seemingly humble environment that proved to be something of a wonderland. “I spent that year living in a barn with the squirrels and the birds, on my own most of the time, and I discovered so much about music and how to create it,” says the Tennessee-bred singer/songwriter. “Instead of going into a studio with a producer for two weeks, I just waited for the record to build itself. I’d get up and go outside, see a butterfly and connect that with some impulsive thought I’d had three months ago, and suddenly a song I’d been working on would make sense. That’s how the whole album came to be.”

The follow-up to 2018’s critically acclaimed Wide Awake, If I Were a Butterfly finds Baxter co-producing alongside Tim O’Sullivan (Grace Potter, The Head and the Heart) and Kai Welch (Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull), slowly piecing together the album’s patchwork of lush psychedelia and Beatlesesque pop. In addition to working at Thunder Sound (the Kentucky studio he called home for months on end), Baxter recorded in California, Texas, Tennessee, and Washington, enlisting a remarkable lineup of musicians: Shakey Graves, Lennon Stella, several members of Cage the Elephant, Zac Cockrell of Alabama Shakes, Morning Teleportation’s Travis Goodwin, and legendary Motown drummer Miss Bobbye Hall, among many others. In an especially meaningful turn, two of the album’s tracks feature the elegant pedal steel work of his father, Bucky Baxter (a musician who performed with Bob Dylan and who passed away in May 2020). Thanks to the extraordinary care and ingenuity behind its creation, If I Were a Butterfly arrives as a work of rarefied magic, capable of stirring up immense feeling while leaving the listener happily wonderstruck.

Baxter’s debut release as a producer, If I Were a Butterfly bears a dazzling unpredictability that has much to do with his limitless imagination as a collector and collagist of sound. “Sometimes the bullfrogs in the pond outside would pulse in a certain tempo and I’d apply that to a song, or I’d hear a bird chirping and it would inspire me to add harmonica in a particular place,” he says. “I could be walking around this massive building in the middle of the night and the air-conditioning would turn on, and it’d give me the idea to include a synth part that holds a similar note. I’d wait for those moments to happen and whenever I tried to force anything, the music usually rejected it.”

A perfect introduction to If I Were a Butterfly’s elaborate sonic world, the album-opening title track begins with a recording of a Baxter singing at age four, then drifts into a delicately sprawling reverie ornamented with so many lovely details (lavish flute and cello melodies, radiant horns, the hypnotic harmonies of Lennon Stella and Baxter’s girlfriend, Sophia Rose). “I liked the idea of the first voice on the record being me as a little kid, not knowing where I’d be today,” notes Baxter, who embedded newly unearthed audio clips of himself and his older sister Brooke all throughout the album. Graced with the combustible guitar work of his bandmate Barney Cortez, “Billy Goat” kicks up a potent tension with its restless grooves and hot-tempered gang vocals. “It’s a breakup song about being with someone who’s on a different life path—one side wants to influence the other, and inevitably you part ways,” says Baxter. From there, the album takes on a feverish momentum with “Rubberband Man,” a delightfully frenzied track channeling a wild and giddy freedom. “There’s rubber bands all over the property at Thunder Sound—in the earth, in the concrete, used as insulation for the studio,” says Baxter. “I took a mishmash of images in my head and it turned into a song about staying flexible, rolling with the punches.”

In its searching reflection on love and loss and striving for transcendence, If I Were a Butterfly reaches a quietly glorious intensity on “Tadpole”: a piano ballad threaded with childhood memories at turns oddly tender (catching frogs and crawfish in a nearby toxic creek) and nightmarish (hearing the gunshot when an across-the-street neighbor took her own life). And on “My Argentina,” If I Were a Butterfly closes out with a piano-driven and painfully raw outpouring, its starkness intermittently broken by soulful strings and gospel-esque harmonies. “One time at the studio I stayed up all night and played that song maybe 100 times; we ended up using the last take, which was recorded at about five in the morning,” says Baxter. “It’s a song that represents the thoughts one might have about a perfect love life, and I love how it ends the album in a big angelic cloud of reverb.”

For Baxter, the act of self-producing such a sonically and emotionally expansive body of work proved both exhilarating and arduous. “It really wore me out to spend all that time alone at the studio, editing the hell out of this record; my heart definitely suffered,” he says. “But I also had the guidance of my dad, who was in my dreams all the time—if I was moving too fast, I’d hear him telling me to slow down.” Another profound influence on the album-making process: the 2018 deaths of Baxter’s close friends Billy Swayze (a musician whose parents owned the rubber band company that became Thunder Sound) and Tiger Merritt (the vocalist/guitarist for Morning Teleportation, who worked with Swayze in constructing the studio). “Billy and Tiger had been going up there since 2015, and finally they turned it into a legit recording studio,” he says. “It’s a very special place to me, so they’re two of the four angels I decided to dedicate this record to.”

Even in its most somber moments, If I Were a Butterfly wholly fulfills Baxter’s mission of imparting a certain purposeful joy. “It’s been a weird few years, but I think the big picture is for us to just exist and find love and be loved, and try to see that all the daily bullshit is simply bugs on the windshield,” says Baxter. “I hope that this album makes people feel the way I do whenever I listen to my favorite records, and that it gives them a platform to dream on.”

Tour Dates

My Morning Jacket Announce ‘Circuital (Deluxe Edition)’

My Morning Jacket have announced a deluxe edition of their GRAMMY® Award-nominated sixth studio album, CIRCUITAL, arriving via ATO Records as 3xLP and 2CD on Friday, December 9.

The expanded new edition – which features the original album along with 10 previously unreleased demo recordings – will be available in three unique vinyl variants, including “Setting Sun” (orange vinyl mixed with bright transparent yellow), “Lucifer’s Beach” (opaque blue and ultra-clear marble colored vinyl), and “Inner Light” (neon magenta vinyl mixed with ultra-clear swirl); all three will feature a glow-in-the-dark triple gatefold jacket with expanded artwork, zoetrope LP labels, a fold-out poster with unreleased studio photos, and a special MMJ Owl graphic side etching. The 2CD edition will feature a 6-panel digipack and exclusive 20-page booklet. Pre-orders are available now.

CIRCUITAL (DELUXE EDITION) is heralded by today’s premiere of the never-before-heard “Circuital (First Band Demo),” available now at all DSPs and streaming services.

Co-produced by Jim James and Tucker Martine (R.E.M., Sufjan Stevens, The Decemberists) in the band’s home state of Kentucky, CIRCUITAL proved a major leap forward for My Morning Jacket, matching homespun intimacy with their signature commitment to constant exploration.

In keeping with their career-long devotion to their purest creative impulses, the band embraced an unchecked spontaneity throughout the recording process, a decision that ultimately led them into thrilling new directions. The result marked a stunning reinvention of the MMJ sound, simultaneously forging new ground while maintaining the distinct spirit of the band’s previous work. Originally released May 31, 2011, CIRCUITAL debuted at #5 on the overall Billboard 200 upon its initial arrival – the band’s highest charting debut thus far.

Highlighted by such fan favorites as “Holdin On To Black Metal,” “Victory Dance,” and the seven-minute epic title track, the album earned My Morning Jacket their second of three consecutive GRAMMY® Award nominations for “Best Alternative Music Album” along with international acclaim from such outlets as Rolling Stone, which wrote, “(CIRCUITAL) feels like the culmination of the sonic adventures the band began with 2005’s Z – while also capturing the power and dynamics that have made MMJ one of the greatest live bands of their generation.”

“Every record is like a time machine and we all keep changing and changing,” says Jim James. “I’ve come to see myself as a kind of older sibling to the younger version of me, so it’s almost like I become two beings when I sing a song from the olden times: one is the person who wrote the song so long ago, the other is the current me who’s there as support for my younger self, alive forever in the multiverse. And then those two voices combine to form something new and different every time.”

CIRCUITAL (DELUXE EDITION) follows last month’s digital premiere of LIVE FROM RCA STUDIO A (ACOUSTIC), available now via ATO Records at all DSPs and streaming services. Originally released earlier this year as a Record Store Day vinyl exclusive, the LP collects seven tracks from 2021’s acclaimed MY MORNING JACKET, recorded solo by frontman Jim James at the famed RCA Studios in Nashville. Official live performance videos of the session are streaming now at YouTube.

Last month also saw the arrival of the second installment in My Morning Jacket’s MMJ LIVE vinyl series, MMJ LIVE VOL. 2: CHICAGO 2021, available now at all DSPs and streaming services and on 3LP translucent orange vinyl (with triple gatefold jacket and digital download card). Recorded live at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, IL on November 11, 2021, MMJ LIVE VOL. 2: CHICAGO 2021 features a six-sided, 20-song setlist of career highlights, spanning new tracks from MY MORNING JACKET to classic cuts and fan favorites like “Dondante,” “Mahgeetah,” and “Phone Went West.”

CIVIC Announce New Album ‘Taken By Force’

Melbourne-based five-piece CIVIC – Jim McCullough (vocals) – Lewis Hodgson (guitar) – Roland Hlavka (bass) – Jackson Harry (guitar) – Matt Blach (drums) – return with their visceral new full-length studio album Taken By Force – due out February 10th via ATO Records. The LP was recorded in the Castlemaine countryside with Radio Birdman frontman Rob Younger producing and was mixed and mastered by Mikey Young (Total Control, Eddy Current, Sonny & the Sunsets). Today’s news comes with the release of Taken By Force’s lead single and music video for “End of the Line” – watch the James Gorter directed clip HERE – and pre-order/pre-save the album HERE.

“I wrote that song about a solo trip I took around Europe in my early 20s, and the anxiety of realizing I had no one to protect me but myself. It’s about the realization of your own mortality, and finding peace in a chaotic moment that you have no control over.” – Jim McCullough

Taken By Force is CIVIC’s follow up to their critically acclaimed 2021 debut full-length Future Forecast – an album of songs that showcased the band’s frenetic yet melodic sound coupled with introspective lyrics. Taken By Force picks up where their debut left off, seeing CIVIC joyfully obliterate the line between furious catharsis and unbridled fun. It’s an album the band aptly sums up as “1984 meets Endless Summer.” CIVIC have reimagined the reckless intensity of proto-punk for an era of endless uncertainty to become one of the most exhilarating bands to emerge in recent years.

Originally forming back in 2017, CIVIC released their debut EP New Vietnam in 2018 and were quickly crowned as “Melbourne’s New Kings of Wild Rock And Roll” by Vice. With the release of their debut album Future Forecast, Stereogum described their sound as “an unholy lo-fi pile-up of garage rock, punk, and ‘90s-style noise-rock,” and the LP was praised by the NME as “an album that rivals real-life gig-going.” It was with Future Forecast that they found their fanbase expanding and led to them inking their deal with ATO Records in late 2021.

Now CIVIC are back with Taken By Force – an immersive and emotionally arresting body of work that the band hopes will leave listeners with the same revelatory sensation they found in discovering the music that’s shaped them. Due out February 10th 2023 via ATO Records, you can pre-save/pre-order the album HERE and you can check out the lead single and first video for “End of the Line” HERE.

Rayland Baxter Releases “My Argentina” Single

Rayland Baxter shared a new single entitled “My Argentina.” The track appears on his upcoming new album, If I Were A Butterfly, which ATO Records will release this Friday, November 4.

The death of Rayland’s father, renowned pedal steel guitarist Bucky Baxter, influenced the songs making up If I Were A Butterfly. The elder Baxter appears posthumously on his son’s fourth studio album. Other contributors include Shakey Graves, Alabama Shakes’ Zac Cockrell, Morning Teleportation’s Travis Goodwin, members of Cage the Elephant and acclaimed Motown drummer Miss Bobbye Hall, among others.

Rayland Baxter recorded the bulk of If I Were A Butterfly while living alone in Kentucky at an abandoned rubber-band factory converted into a recording studio called Thunder Sound. Additional tracking sessions were held in Washington, Texas, Tennessee and California. Regarding “My Argentina,” Rayland Baxter stated:

This song is a goodbye to destructive and temperamental characters of my consciousness … the firecrackers that blow up in my face … the brick wall I drive through just to look back and see an easier way around … after the everything in hindsight had been destroyed … it was too late. I lost friends because of this character and I lost loved ones because of this character … this character … I found to be my navigational hang up. Of course, there was a way to the gentle and effective walk around a wall … and this is my goodbye to the hang up.

Listen to “My Argentina” via available streaming platforms. Watch the live performance video for “My Argentina” below:

Altin Gün Return With New Single “Leylim Ley”

GRAMMY® Award-nominated Turkish psych-folk innovators Altin Gün have shared their stunning new single, “Leylim Ley,” available now at all DSPs and streaming services.

A classic song of lost love and exile, “Leylim Ley” features music composed by renowned Turkish musician, author, poet, and politician Zülfü Livaneli and lyrics written by the late Turkish novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist Sabahattin Ali (1907-1948).

While his life was cut brutally short, Ali occupies a very important spot in Turkey’s modern literature, his limited body of work frequently reimagined through music, theater, and more. Taken from Ali’s 1937 short story, “Ses,” “Leylim Ley” was joined by music composed by Livaneli in 1975 and has since been embraced as one of the most well-known and beloved songs among Turkish people everywhere.

This dazzling new reinvention of “Leylim Ley” – energized by all the power and urgency of Altin Gün’s famously propulsive live performances – heralds the arrival of the band’s eagerly awaited new album, due via ATO Records in 2023.

Hailing from Amsterdam but coming from various backgrounds (Turkish, Indonesian, Dutch), Altin Gün have captured the world’s imagination with their indelible fusion of psychedelic rock, deep funk, synthpop, cosmic reggae, and more with the rich and incredibly diverse traditions of Anatolian and Turkish folk music.

The band emerged in 2017 and quickly earned a prestigious GRAMMY® Award nomination for “Best World Album” with their 2019 sophomore LP, Gece, a triumph they followed with 2021’s critically acclaimed Yol.

Known for their dizzyingly hypnotic live performances, Altin Gün has spent much of this past year lighting up stages around the world, including sold out headline tours in North America, Europe, and the UK, along with show-stopping sets at such top international festivals as Indio, CA’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the Netherlands’ Best Kept Secret, and Barcelona, Spain’s Primavera Sound, to name but a few.

Upcoming dates include an eagerly awaited performance at Reykjavik, Iceland’s Iceland Airwaves (November 4), followed by headline shows in Germany and Austria, as well as three historic collaborations with the Netherlands’ world famous Metropole Orkest, set for shows in Arnhem (December 6), Amsterdam (December 7), and Heerlen, NL (December 16). A wide ranging EU/UK headline run follows in March 2023, with North American tour dates to be announced soon.

Honey Harper Releases New Album ‘Honey Harper & The Infinite Sky’

Toronto-based cosmic country band Honey Harper released their sophomore album Honey Harper & The Infinite Sky via ATO Records. Also today they announced a 2023 European tour that will make stops in London, Paris, Brussels and more. The band is currently in the midst of a national tour supporting Amanda Shires with upcoming shows in Chicago, Minneapolis, Austin and many more. Find a full list of tour dates below or visit here.

Earlier this week, Honey Harper released the “Urban Cowboy by way of The Terminator” official video for “Boots Mine Gold,” which BrooklynVegan proclaimed, “has a late-’70s / early-’80s feel to it, gleaming, electric and lush, which is a sweet spot for William Fussell’s deep croon.”

The song followed the recent release of the “cinematic” (The FADER) official video for the single “Ain’t No Cowboys In Georgia” that was shot in the Canadian Rockies and guest stars musician Sean Nicholas Savage.

The first song to be released from the album, “Broken Token,” was released alongside a live performance video from EastWest Studios, which BrooklynVegan said “marks a progression in Honey Harper’s spectral country sound,” while The Boot praised “the innovative, genre-bending outfit” and called it a “modernized, groovy throwback to classic country-rock of the 1970s.”

Honey Harper & The Infinite Sky emerged from a deliberate revamping of the band’s creative approach with Honey Harper co-founder and keyboardist Alana Pagnutti taking on a far greater role in the songwriting process alongside frontman William Fussell.

The 12 song collection marks their first time recording with their stacked band The Infinite Sky featuring their longtime bassist and contributing writer Mick Mayer, pianist John Carroll Kirby (Solange, Steve Lacy), Spoon keyboardist Alex Fischel, guitarist Jackson MacIntosh (Drugdealer, Jessica Pratt), pedal-steel player Connor Gallaher (Black Lips, Calexico), and TOPS drummer Riley Fleck. The album was mixed at Wowcat Studios in Los Angeles by Joel Ford (yes/and, Ford & Lopatin).

Tour Dates supporting Amanda Shires

10/28 – Indianapolis, IN @ Hi-Fi
11/3 – Louisville, KY @ Headliners
11/4 – Ann Arbor, MI @ The Ark
11/5 – Evanston, IL @ The Space
11/7 – Minneapolis, MN @ Amsterdam
11/8 – Kansas City, MO @ Madrid Theater
11/9 – Oklahoma City, Ok @ Beer City Gardens
11/11 – Dallas, TX @ The Kessler
11/12 – Houston, TX @ Heights Theater
11/13 – Austin, TX @ Antone’s
11/15 – Little Rock, AR @ Rev! Room
11/16 – St. Louis, MO @ Old Rock House
11/18 – Madison, WI @ Majestic Theatre
11/19 – Des Moines, IA @ Wooly’s
11/20 – Omaha, NE @ Barnato

2023 European Tour

3/2 – Utrecht, NL @ TivoliVredenburg, Club Nine
3/3 – Groningen, NL @ Vera
3/4 – Brussels, BE @ Botanique, Witlof Bar
3/6 – Paris, FR @ Pop Up!
3/9 – Brighton, UK @ Green Door Store
3/12 – Manchester, UK @ Gullivers
3/13 – London, UK @ Moth Club
3/14 – Bristol, UK @ Crofters
3/15 – Birmingham, UK @ The Hare and The Hound
3/16 – Birkenhead, UK @ Future Yard
3/17 – Edinburgh, UK @ Sneaky Petes
3/18 – Glasgow, UK @ Broadcast

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Announce Reissues

Flying Microtonal Banana
5 Year Golden Rattlesnake Edition 🐍
– 5^th anniversary, limited-edition pressing of 3,000
– Deluxe gold foil jacket with golden inner-sleeve
– Golden nugget colored vinyl w/gold LP labels
– 100% recyclable custom paper sleeve
– Includes digital download

Pre-Order Now

Float Along/ Fill Your Lungs
Venusian Sky Edition 🪐
– Black, white, & blue “A-side/B-side” effect colored vinyl
– Housed in a 100% recyclable custom paper sleeve
– Includes digital download

Pre-Order Now

Paper Mâché Dream Balloon
2xLP Instrumental Edition 🌈 
– 2xLP’s, the original Paper Mâché LP plus the full album, INSTRUMENTAL
– Fresh “mango wave” and “champagne lemon” colored vinyl
– Custom inner-sleeves and obi-strip with additional art by Jason Galea
– *This item is NOT the limited-edition 3D lenticular

Pre-Order Now

Alabama Shakes’ ‘Boys And Girls’ Turns 10 With Double-Disc Deluxe Edition

ATO Records will commemorate the 10th anniversary of Alabama Shakes’ internationally acclaimed debut album, Boys And Girls, with a two-disc deluxe edition, set for December 9 release.

Hailed as one of the best albums of 2012 by Rolling Stone and numerous other publications, Boys And Girls entered Billboard’s Independent Albums chart at No. 1. It went on to attain Platinum certification and earn the band multiple Grammy nominations. Lead single “Hold On” was voted the No.1 Best Song of 2012 by Rolling Stone.

Repackaged in a foil-board gatefold jacket with new, unreleased photos, Boys And Girls 10 Year Anniversary Deluxe Edition contains the album’s original 11 songs plus an additional 11 tracks from the band’s explosive live performance on KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” which aired in the months leading up to the album’s release. You can listen to Alabama Shakes’ ferocious live version of “Always Alright” – a non-album track that appeared on the soundtrack for the Oscar-nominated film Silver Linings Playbook and earned a Grammy nomination – below.

Alabama Shakes – comprising singer/guitarist Brittany Howard, guitarist Heath Fogg, bassist Zac Cockrell, and drummer Steve Johnson – recorded Boys And Girls in Nashville, funding the sessions with their day jobs ((Howard worked as a mail carrier, while Johnson served as a night watchman at a nuclear power plant) and nighttime gigs, playing James Brown and AC/DC covers in dive bars.

Soon after the arrival of Boys & Girls, Alabama Shakes found themselves thrust into the global spotlight, achieving such milestones as performing at the White House and on Saturday Night Live along with winning widespread critical praise. Pitchfork lauded “Howard’s gale-force delivery, an instrument that could have blown Otis Redding back.”

The New York Times’ Jon Pareles said, “Alabama Shakes sound raw-boned and proudly unprocessed.” NME hailed the band as “a genuine, word-of-mouth, go-see-them-then-tell-10-friends-how-amazing-they-are thing.” The Guardian observed, “their music, a deep earthy pit of blues and soul and swamp, is the sort of stuff that honeys the soul and puts fire in the loins.”

As the album’s legacy continues to grow – NPR included “Hold On” in the top five of its list of “The 200 Greatest Songs By 21st Century Women+” in 2018 – Boys & Girls remains a major cultural touchstone whose songs of survival, longing and irrepressible hope never lose their transcendent power.

Pre-order Boys And Girls.