With the release of their first full-length album, Boys & Girls, in 2012, Alabama Shakes quickly earned critical acclaim and a loyal fanbase. Their second album, 2015’s Sound & Color, advanced the group's reputation, winning three Grammy Awards, including Best Rock Song for Don’t Wanna Fight. That song’s opening guitar riff, which could stand alongside some of Keith Richards’ finest hooks, sets the stage for Brittany Howard’s distinctive, commanding voice—equal parts rock ’n’ roll and Southern soul, with echoes of Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.
But Sound & Color is hardly a collection of rock anthems. The title track opens with shimmering vibraphone and laid-back drums, while Howard delivers an unusually restrained, melodic vocal. The result is atmospheric, almost psychedelic. It’s that sense of dynamics—and the way the band moves between rock, soul, and ambient sounds—that gives the album its depth.
Concerned that the relentless pace of touring and recording might lead to burnout, the band eventually took a hiatus. During that time, Howard released two well-received solo albums. Much like her work with Alabama Shakes, those records revealed a multidimensional songwriter and arranger, someone comfortable moving between rock, soul and R&B while also exploring folk and other territory. A song like Georgia offered another glimpse of her seemingly limitless creativity.
That creativity was on full display when Howard performed at the Britt Festival in Jacksonville in the fall of 2024. She and her band somehow managed to reproduce the complexity and nuance of her studio recordings onstage without sacrificing the immediacy and energy of a live performance.
Now Alabama Shakes are back with their highly-anticipated new album, I Must Be Dreaming. The title comes from a line in American Dream, one of the album’s advance singles—a protest song that laments our current political divide while leaving room for the possibility that we might find our way through it. I Feel Hope Coming covers the same territory from a more optimistic perspective.
Some of the advance singles initially sounded more like Howard’s solo work than the Alabama Shakes of old. But rather than trying to recreate the past, the band seems intent to build on it.
Centered around soul and R&B but refusing to stay in one stylistic lane, I Must Be Dreaming is an eclectic record, with dramatic shifts in mood across its eleven tracks. The opener, Tea Time, has a distinctly ’70s psychedelic quality, while Time ventures into experimental territory. Despite sharing a title with a Pink Floyd classic, the song feels less like a tribute than a journey into the kind of exploratory sound heard on Pink Floyd’s early records, including A Saucerful of Secrets.
Friends takes a completely different turn, with an early-2000s indie-pop vibe, while How Love’s Supposed to Go is closer to the Alabama Shakes’ earlier sound, built around a heavy, funky beat.
If I have one criticism—and it’s hardly a deal-breaker—it’s that the band’s tendency toward a dense, sometimes towering wall of sound can leave too little room for the music to breathe. There are moments when a little more space between the notes might make the arrangements even more powerful.
But that’s a relatively minor complaint on an album this rich. I Must Be Dreaming rewards repeated listening, and I suspect it will continue revealing new details for quite some time. It was a long time coming, but worth the wait. For me, it’s already near the top of the list of favorite albums of 2026.
Join us as we unpack I Must Be Dreaming in the coming weeks on Open Air – weekdays 9am-3pm on JPR’s Rhythm and News Service.
