📍Moody Center — Sept. 25, 2025
Written by Krysta Ayers / Photos by Erick Hernandez
I first saw Alabama Shakes, from far away, during ACL in 2015. They were performing on the Honda Stage, tiny figures punching out nostalgia-filled rock ‘n’ roll melodies with Brittany Howard’s voice bellowing over the sea of people. They played an “early” (read: not main headliner, the sun was still out) show that year, performing their newly released Sound and Color album.
A decade later, I watched on Saturday as the Athens, Alabama-based band performed in a setting specifically designed for them, on a stage that mimicked a private garden at Hampton Court, as part of their reunion tour across North America.
There is no hiding that Alabama Shakes are from the South. Band name aside, the twangy accent is as solid as a bar of gold in Howard’s mouth and is the foundation for her vocal range, whether going into a falsetto or digging deep into her belly for a baritone key. She tells us, early into the set, that the band plays “this kind of music” because it’s what they could all agree on—it hinges on the Southern, Black influence of rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll, and it’s the perfect mechanism to drive home the all-too-real lyrics penned by the band.
The set opens up with a twangy guitar riff as they jump into “Hang Loose” off their 2012 album, Boys and Girls. Howard, keeping the tracklist see-sawing from that album to 2015’s Sound and Color, then dedicates “I Found You” to “anyone who had to wait a long time to find someone to love them.” The peach-colored lights beamed across the stage with the illusion that the band, specifically Howard, were the only ones in the room. I could have lived in that moment forever.
Howard later tells us that she used to be a “mail lady” before success came to the band and gave her job a “three-hour notice” once she got the call that changed her life monumentally. And so in a hotel room, with a guitar in hand, she wrote “This Feeling.” She plays it on stage with low-key drums, a steady bass (played by Zac Cockrell), and her familiar guitar plucking, her backup singers providing subtle soulful harmonies. She takes a bow when she finishes, and then raises her hands over her head in victory—gratitude and triumph wrapped into each other.
They play “Joe,” then this year’s single, “Another Life,” which is a soulful blues track featuring a classic R&B drum beat, wailing guitars that accompany the verses, and pleading lyrics asking a lover for a chance to try again.
The back half of the main show (that is to say, before the encore) was just as epic and groovy as the first. I wondered how time, a social construct as it were, could have passed so quickly—it seemed that as soon as it started, it was already coming to a crashing, robust end. With songs like “Rise to the Sun,” “Someday,” “Hold On,” “Sound and Color,” and “Don’t Wanna Fight,” it was jam-packed with finger-snapping bangers that kept us on our feet the whole time. The latter, “Don’t Wanna Fight,” was so powerful; the shrill scream at the beginning of the song immediately placed goosebumps on my arms.
With a grandiose finish, they played “Gimme All Your Love,” and Howard’s vocals battled it out with the rhythm guitar to see which could be more forceful. When the band stepped off stage, the crowd proceeded with the longest, loudest encore cheer I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing. (My brother, the next day, still claimed to have sore arms from all the clapping.)
The three-song encore ended with “Always Alright” and an unwavering conviction that Alabama Shakes doesn’t have to prove anything—they exist, they are thunderously fucking good, they are Southern rock, and they are always going to be alright.
