With vintage twanging blues riffs and Brittany Howard’s big hearted wails, Alabama Shakes stood amongst the crowds of synthy shoegazers and indie posers and delivered a masterclass in rootsy Southern soul grooves when they broke in 2012. They went on to sell over a million copies of debut album Boys And Girls and charm the socks off even the surliest of muso snotballs, as Howard stood out as a compelling mix of golden-voiced, gospel mama and gawky, spurned songwriter. By the end of three gruelling years of touring though, they were burned out and lumbered by snipes of being a backward-looking Dad-band simply photo-copying the Muscle Shoals sound.

Refreshed and revitalised, the swagger is back and the mid-tempo template has been torn up on second album, Sound And Color. Jolting neo-soul, experimental funk and jagged rock riffs are the order of the day as the band shape shift towards the more challenging corners of their record collection. Resisting the urge to go in search of another big radio-friendly hit, they instead suck you in slowly with tender Curtis Mayfield jams, Prince yelps and taut, squelchy bass lines. It’s a brave move that sacrifices that instant rush of warm, Americana-soul joy, but they sound tighter and more unrestricted as a result. If their debut was full of sun-going-down, hazy summer singalongs, Sound And Colour is the end-of-the-night, slightly dishevelled, after-party.

Single ‘Don’t Wanna Fight’ leads their transition from humble, small town bar band into grunting, funky, midnight rollers with a sparse, strutting rhythm offset by Howard’s pained waving of the white flag  – “Take from my hand, put in your hand/The fruit of all my grief/ Lying down aint easy, when everyone needs pleasing/ I can’t get no relief”. Taking on the spirit of Sly Stone’s dark, trippy R’n’B, it’s a bottom-of-the-barrel, nerve frayed cry for peace that hints at the band’s slightly fraught frame of mind.

The change in Howard as a performer also seems significant. Whereas once she cut a shy, awkward figure with thick specs and floral frocks, she now looks freshly styled and comfortable in letting loose her inner diva. It’s all a little less wholesome and more raw and theatrical as she unleashes mighty old bellow on ‘Gimme All Your Love’, a hushed Hammond organ ballad that explodes like a television evangelist from a whispered sermon into a screeching cacophony. ‘The Greatest’ takes another impromptu tangent with a garage rock thrash that could have featured on Kings of Leon’s first album, and the rule book goes completely out the window on ‘Future People’, an eccentric disco stomp that sounds like the meeting of Donna Summer, Missy Elliot and Erykah Badu.

It’s a slow burn and at times the experiments fall flat, but it’s an album that frees the band and opens up new possibilities. They were always likeable, now they seem genuinely compelling. It feels like the gamble paid off.

Sound And Color is out now via Rough Trade.

Kevin Irwin

@TrotterFist