After a decade away, Alabama Shakes return with a new song, ‘Another Life’

Is there a more powerful marketing tool than nostalgia? It’s an essential element of many a reunion tour, where audiences clamor to see acts from pop music’s past romp through the hits of their heydays.

There’s something a bit more complicated, and rewarding, going on with the reunion of the Alabama Shakes. For one thing, the band — which released its last album, Sound & Color, a decade ago — confronted the perception that it was a revival act earlier in its career. Initially, the Shakes were pegged as a retro Southern soul outfit, thanks to their preference for hand-played instruments and sinewy grooves, the ecstatic power front woman Brittany Howard could muster at will and the proximity of their North Alabama hometown to the storied recording scene of Muscle Shoals. But the group found