“I’VE BEEN STAYING open, you don’t wanna grow,” Brittany Howard sings on the title track from her second solo record. The song is a hard-funk failing-relationship jeremiad that might leave the “you” in question reduced to a puddle on the floor by the time it’s done. But whoever she’s singing to should’ve known better. Staying relentlessly open has been Howard’s guiding principle going all the way back to her breakout moment fronting Athens, Alabama garage-rockers Alabama Shakes in the early 2010s.
What Now is another side of Brittany Howard that makes each of her previous departures feel like a baby step by comparison. “Earth Sign” opens with a spacious avant-jazz pastorale that gets bigger, stronger, and grittier as it builds to a sunburst climax. “I Don’t” is a yearning Philly soul reverie. “Prove It To You” suggests Prince getting busy in the studio after coming home from a U.K. tour in the late Eighties with an armload of acid house records. “Samson” is a strikingly low-key ballad that evolves into molten fusion drift lifted by Rod McGaha’s trumpet, bringing to mind the softer, more fluid meditations of mid-Seventies Miles Davis. By the time you reach the album-ending “Every Color in Blue,” with liquid In Rainbows-era Radiohead guitar backing Howard’s powerhouse Nina Simone-esque vocals, what should be a willful marriage of opposites feels stunningly natural.
Posted from: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/brittany-howard-what-now-review-1234958853/
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