Since Alabama Shakes released a new record, Donald Trump had not yet been elected president for the first time, so it’s been a long while. They weren’t a trio either, as their former drummer had been dismissed from the band for shady reasons. ‘I Must Be Dreaming’, unveiled this summer in Madrid, is their first album in 11 years and probably the friendliest-sounding yet, given that many of the songs also speak of love and domestic happiness, even though they don’t shy away from touching politics at times, given the current landscape.
It’s somewhat confusing to hear the band’s leader and vocalist Brittany Howard in a track like ‘Time’ celebrate how wonderful it is to wake up each day next to someone, and in ‘American Dream’ condemn ICE, the White House and climate change, among many other things, all in a single paragraph. It feels as if she might have preferred spreading these themes across different songs, rather than cramming them into one.
Above all, the album’s mood is serene and warm. This is aided by the atmospheric production crafted with Shawn Everett, in a Nashville-recorded effort. Reflections on friendship (‘Garden’), the “what would have happened if” moments of life (‘Another Life’), and, of course, love (‘How Love’s Supposed to Go’) arrive wrapped in a hazy, diffuse production, rich percussion and distorted guitars. Alabama Shakes’ Southern rock remains present, but here it appears more blurred and atmospheric, creating a sense of hovering on a cloud or within a dream.
The dream is unsettled in the more political cuts, such as the opener ‘Tea Time’, which with its psychedelic textures adopts an almost martial tone, yet chooses to deliver a positive message: “With wisdom to turn shields into mirrors / and enemies into lovers.” That embrace of hope is sublimated in ‘I Feel Hope Coming’, which, with a beautiful melody and Afro-soul arrangements, dreams of a day when we shed the “political lies.” The political message is vague, but the song is beautiful and serves as a consolation, almost as much as Sam Cooke’s classic does.
Perhaps we didn’t expect, after 11 years, a record so specifically devoted to ballads, which make up the majority of the album. Although the contrast between the roughness of the production and the sweetness of the sixties-inspired melodies is very appealing, the sequence would have benefited from more dynamism, since only toward the end do more electric and vibrant tracks like ‘Waist Deep’, in a folk-rock mode, suddenly give the record a bit more vitality.
Precisely because it is such an atmospheric work focused on intimacy, and perhaps also because of the hazy and meandering nature of some melodies, ‘I Must Be Dreaming’ might have worked better as an album fully dedicated to romantic happiness or general life joy, since its political reflections don’t quite hit the mark, nor reflect the spirit of the album. In the end, it is tender moments like ‘Tied to You’ that point the way.
