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Apr 20, 2012Their roots are just that--roots, not anchors, allowing the group to grow, often in unexpected and quietly thrilling ways.
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Apr 26, 2012While the result doesn't justify the buildup, there is no doubt that frontwoman Brittany Howard is a major talent.
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Apr 5, 2012Lyrics are route-one effective throughout, as you'd expect from an album called Boys & Girls, but the Shakes are not one-dimensional.
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Apr 11, 2012Boys & Girls is a short album that clocks in at 35-minutes over the course of 11 songs. But by the time it's done, you'll want to start it over again.
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Apr 16, 2012Those who have witnessed the group's floor-shaking live shows might be a bit disarmed by the deliberately dense and lo-fi production of "Boys & Girls."
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Apr 12, 2012This good old-fashioned rock and soul quartet make good on their buzz with a debut that not only shakes, but also rattles and rolls.
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Apr 6, 2012The rough-hewn production wouldn't pass muster on a major-label budget: amplifiers audibly hum, voices crack with emotion, a few bum notes crop up here and there. But this band is terrific all the same.
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Apr 10, 2012Boys & Girls, is a profound submission, one which injects fresh life into the genre while maintaining its blazing spirit.
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Apr 5, 2012In the cold light of day the album feels flat and utterly predictable.
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Apr 5, 2012The rawness of the band puts them in a different category than other soul revivalists like Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, but the visceral quality of Boys & Girls gives Alabama Shakes an edge.
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Apr 10, 2012The Alabama Shakes' first album, Boys & Girls, is an electric jolt that anyone who loves blues-based rock music should track down immediately
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MojoApr 20, 2012[Boy & Girls] casts Brittany as a soulful singer, but the album is more Xerox copy than feel and spirit based. [May 2012, p.86]
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Apr 6, 2012This is an album packed with promise but which tails off somewhat at the close.
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Apr 10, 2012In many ways Boys & Girls it is as note-perfect an album as you'll hear all year, yet it's also often perfectly inert.
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Apr 16, 2012Perhaps ... the best way to describe Boys & Girls: unwilling to innovate or add anything new to its genre, preferring to remind us of the roots of rock instead of showing us what made the pioneers so great, a reminder of a past love instead of a new love for us to discover.
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Apr 5, 2012Their talent and impossible-to-fake passion merit the sudden attention.
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Apr 10, 2012Boys & Girls is best enjoyed not as an anachronism but as a fresh take on the sounds from a bygone era.
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Apr 9, 2012A solid debut.
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Apr 9, 2012Boys & Girls is more than a debut album. It's an introduction to a band you thought you knew for years, but are just fortunate enough to meet now.
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Apr 16, 2012The album encapsulates summers of falling asleep on porches, cicadas chirping periodically among the trees, shaking slightly from a passing breeze.
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Q MagazineApr 13, 2012Alabama Shakes' nods to vocal giants past never overshadow the fact that their music has a raw, aggressive style that is completely their own. [May 2012, p.90]
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Apr 10, 2012Howard's black-dirt gravitas holds it all together.
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Apr 9, 2012Boys & Girls is a fine album, full of sturdy Southern-fried blues performed with swagger and verve. As the proper debut for a band that's built its reputation on the fearless pandemonium of its live shows, however, Boys & Girls is curiously and deliberately subdued.
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Apr 10, 2012Exciting as it can be, Boys & Girls could use just a little more shakin' going on.
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Apr 10, 2012The great news is that even the bad news is good news: Alabama Shakes have a hell of a lot of growing to do, but even their slightest tunes pack a punch.
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Apr 5, 2012It's enough to hold the interest, although we'd prefer Alabama Shakes to capitalise on their more esoteric elements and cut out the cliches.
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Apr 5, 2012Boys & Girls feels slightly polite and artfully constructed, as if the rest of the band are too respectful of their influences to truly let rip.
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Apr 5, 2012Just a series of great, swampy soul grooves, fronted by the most arresting new voice you'll hear this year, and the kind of natural songwriting that seems to contain the entire history of Southern music within its staves.
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Apr 9, 2012Unrefined, unresigned, occasionally clunky, frequently obtuse but always, always fit to bust.
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Apr 9, 2012Compared to computer-tuned radio pop, or even the big-time pop-soul of a genuine singer like Adele, the Alabama Shakes sound raw-boned and proudly unprocessed.
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Apr 9, 2012They not only shake but also rattle, roll and do everything else to ears and body that the most rumbustious soul-rock and roots music can.
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Apr 10, 2012Boys And Girls is a somewhat predictable trawl through the back catalogues of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Stax Records, Janis Joplin and the recorded output of Muscle Shoals Sound Studios amongst others, but with none of the grit, passion or emotion.
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Apr 5, 2012[Even] if Alabama Shakes do nothing original, they strike classic poses with real guts.
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UncutApr 6, 2012Alabama Shakes are scarcely the first ornery yet soulful rock sound to have emerged from northern Alabama, but they're abundantly worthy bearers of the standard. [May 2012, p.73]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 49 out of 62
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Mixed: 5 out of 62
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Negative: 8 out of 62
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Jun 4, 2020Alabama Shakes debut album and its the best. Love their energy and sound. Hope they have a long long career!!!!
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Feb 24, 2016
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Dec 29, 2014