Album Review: Alabama Shakes, I Must Be Dreaming

Great it is to have Alabama Shakes back. The return grew out of a surprise benefit performance in Tuscaloosa in December 2024.

Brittany Howard contacted guitarist Heath Fogg and bassist Zac Cockrell about playing together again, and the experience felt so natural that rehearsals led to writing, recording and a full reunion tour. I Must Be Dreaming is not an attempt to recreate the raw, southern soul-rock of debut album Boys & Girls; rather is a stranger, dreamier and more expansive continuation of the experimentation heard on 2015 sophomore effort Sound & Color.

Recorded at Nashville’s Sound Emporium and Blackbird Studios, it expands their familiar collision of rock, gospel, blues and soul with flute, harpsichord, sitar and densely layered vocal arrangements.

The band describe it as psychedelic soul – elements which Howard has explored on her solo work. Indeed, ‘Time’ is a marvellous psychedelic jam that trucks into the lo-fi, indie-rock scorched ‘Friends’. That in turn is followed by ‘Easy’, which possesses a minimalist, scratched sonic underlay, over which Howard’s soporific vocal induces a blissful dream state.

Howard has explained that the title of the record captures two opposing sensations - that contemporary life can feel impossibly deranged, yet the world can still appear astonishingly beautiful. Second single ‘American Dream’ encapsulates that supposition, being a snapshot of American life in 2026.

Elsewhere, ‘I Feel Hope Coming’ is rooted in the conviction that protest, solidarity and belief in the ideals of young people represent reasons for optimism.

8/10