![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/ColumnHeader-LiamClements.jpg?resize=250%2C87\" "\\"Liam")
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\u201cOver-night sensation\u201d is tossed around quite a bit when talking about the latest buzz band, especially with the advent of YouTube and do-it-yourself blogs. Alabama Shakes<\/strong> hasn\u2019t been immune to the viral treatment, but unlike many of the other buzz bands out there, they have a spot to claim in 2012\u2019s music playground and the staying power to prove they are more than the clich\u00e9 \u201cover-night sensation.\u201d<\/p>\n Hailing from Athens, Alabama, a town outside of Huntsville with a population roughly on par with Oxford\u2019s, Alabama Shakes has blown up since their \u201cdiscovery\u201d in a Nashville record store only just a year ago. The infancy of the group began when lead singer Brittany Howard<\/strong> approached Zac Cockrell<\/strong> in a high school psych class and extended an invitation to jam. They brought in Steve Johnson<\/strong>, a drummer Brittany knew from the local music store and began performing at parties as a cover band, emulating Led Zeppelin<\/strong> and Otis Redding<\/strong>. By this point, they had begun developing their own sound, a mash of their unique interests. They found commonality and soon after, they laid some tracks down with guitarist Heath Fogg<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Alabama Shakes is a possessed disposition of a soul, jazz, and rock \u2018n\u2019 roll band; an endeavor that hasn\u2019t gone untried, but blasting from this quartet, it\u2019s fresh refreshing–refreshing in the way a mimosa is on a Saturday afternoon. What separates this<\/em> band from the rest of the Otis Redding covers out there is what makes a mimosa not just a standard cup of maimed oranges. It has an edge that flushes down the thickness with a perfect measure of sophistication. The mix is the bustling persona of Brittany Howard. Howard unifies her bi-part nucleus of rock and soul with hints of a schizophrenic-like forwardness that is both curious and tribulating. Her stage presence is intoxicating and her story telling inescapable. They are the tender stories swept under the rug never to wound again, but always still delicately there. They are the narration to the human condition. Oh, and she can play a mean guitar.<\/p>\n The rest of the band is an amplification of Howard\u2019s roots-rocking, soul-shaking persona. The rhythm section delivers an idiom of two flavors. When melodically snaking their path through a tune, they egg on the temperate movement of a swaying neck and relaxed eyes, meandering down a river soaking up the sun\u2019s warm sensations. True to everything else about this band, they can rock it, laying on thick distortion and flipping that R&B motif that runs wild everywhere else into an earnest classic rock exploration, served with the mean vocals of Howard. Most importantly, when the rock personality is in charge, the cymbal crashing dexterity of Johnson\u2019s pulse is perhaps the most impressive, heralding in a rock metal niche that thumps out rhythms that make the rock \u2018n\u2019 roll grooves a cut above this recent crop of buzz bands.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/al2.jpg?resize=208%2C320\" "\\"al2\\"")
All things considered, the band began to gain some notoriety, and soon after their Nashville unearthing, they found themselves opening up for the Drive-By Truckers<\/strong>. (DBT was \u201cblown away\u201d, as the story goes.) Nowadays, having appeared on late night television and accepted the invitation to the pinnacle of all music festivals, SXSW, they\u2019ve become the<\/em> act to book for the 2012 circuit, and before they sail onward across the Atlantic and onto Europe, they\u2019ll be stopping by North Mississippi for a visit–all before their debut drops in April.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/shakes_scream_hellyeah.jpg?resize=240%2C210\" "\\"shakes_scream_hellyeah\\"")
While mulling over the accolades and the prospects of seeing them, (Thursday, March 29 at Proud Larry\u2019s<\/strong>),