The first album Brittany Howard fell in love with: “I’d never heard anything like it”
There’s never been one set way of listening to music. For everyone who’s just looking for a track to throw on in the background as they study or do chores around the house, there are those looking to dig down deep and get into the nitty-gritty of what their favourite songs are really all about. Brittany Howard may have had her passive phase listening to music, but something changed in her DNA when hearing Dark Side of the Moon for the first time.
When listening to Howard’s solo work, it’s not necessarily the kind of ambitious prog-rock epic Pink Floyd had been known for. She has always gravitated towards the sounds of rock and roll’s stone age, back when it was practically just blues and R&B but with a bit more attitude behind it half the time.
While Pink Floyd may have started out with a handful of bluesy textures, they had started to go in a far different direction when they began work on their prog classics. Since they had graduated from The Syd Barrett School of Weirdness, their first post-Barrett albums were usually avant-garde journeys that went absolutely nowhere half the time.
Something strange happened on ‘Echoes’, though, and the band had finally found the key to their sound. Instead of having to go on wild tangents every time they played, their albums could be statements on their own, completely removed from the kind of art-rock projects where every song had to be its own individual exercise.
By the time Howard got ahold of the record, she was transfixed, telling The Guardian, “I’d never heard anything like that before. It got me really interested in what other types of music might be out there. Before that, I didn’t really dig for music: music found me. After hearing it, I got into classic rock and found bands such as Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and Black Sabbath.”
Even though Howard’s work with Alabama Shakes and her solo career has been about the sounds of classic rock, Dark Side of the Moon helped redefine how songs work off each other in the context of an album. While you can cherry-pick pieces like ‘Money’ and ‘Time’ off the album if you want to, it works best when you stick the album on and let the music wash over you, almost like a movie playing out in your head as you listen.
There are even a few moments where the band get their bluesy flair back. Although ‘Money’ is known more these days for its slightly off-kilter time signature, the swing that it has during David Gilmour’s feels like it’s lifted from a strange blues jam where everyone is letting all their inhibitions go.
It’s not like Howard doesn’t have a few pieces of Dark Side etched into her musical vocabulary. Her latest album, What Now, has its feet planted in jazz and soul half the time, but the psychedelic textures and the strange instrumental interludes feel like connective tissue back to her classic rock favourites. Howard has grown as a musician ever since first picking up a guitar, but those formative albums will always find their way back into your sound.
