Boys & Girls by Alabama Shakes

Boys & Girls, the debut from Athens, Alabama's Alabama Shakes, arrived in April 2012, and it sounds like two years of Southern bar and club gigs finally caught on tape. They cut it in Nashville with producer Andrija Tokic before anyone had signed them; the buzz online did the rest, and ATO Records came calling. Brittany Howard sings like she's trying to blow the roof off a church, with Heath Fogg's guitar and Zac Cockrell's bass keeping the groove loose and greasy underneath.

It's vintage soul run through a garage amp. "Hold On", the hit, earned three Grammy nominations, while "Hang Loose" and "I Ain't the Same" show the scrappier, rocking side. In America the record climbed as high as 6 on the Billboard album chart, and British buyers pushed it to 3, and a tenth anniversary deluxe edition in 2022 added a live set from KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.