Song of the Week: "Goat Head"

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"Goat Head"

Brittany Howard

from Jaime

2019

Writing reviews is hard, man. The members of Record Club who do not write weekly usually express these sentiments to me: "I don't know what to write besides 'I liked it' or 'I didn't like it.'" And my secret is that, most of the time, I don't know what to write besides that either! Writing reviews can sometimes feel like an exercise in shouting into the void.

So I can empathize with any of the music critics who were given the assignment of writing about Brittany Howard's Jaime. "It's a very good album"—while true, would not constitute a compelling read. So you gotta find that hook.

Weirdly, many critics chose the same hook: "It sounds just like Howard's band, Alabama Shakes, and that's okay!" And weirdly, I don't even think that's true. The first part, anyway.

Because, while yeah, the singular voice is present both in the Shakes and in Howard's solo work, that's almost it. Jaime adds a whole lot more into the mix. If this were a Shakes record, the hook would've been: "They really took a different approach with this one." It's way more experimental and attacks a whole slew of other genres besides blues rock. I mean, look, it's not completely opposite to Alabama Shakes or anything, but I think saying "this is practically another Alabama Shakes album" is completely incorrect.

I'm particularly enamored so far with "Goat Head," which starts like a late-night R&B jam, with all these stacked light-touch syncopated rhythms. About a third of the way through, Howard comes in like she's doing beat poetry, and she's basically telling a short story about a troubling incident in her youth involving a severed head, a crime in response to Howard's mixed heritage. This is real striking stuff, and I don't think that it would work as an Alabama Shakes song.

It's not that big of a deal. Like, I'm not saying that critics who made this erroneous point are shit. I'm the guy who just wrote a review in the voice of the McGillin's karaoke guy, for christ's sake; I suck too. It's tough finding that hook. I get it.