Instead of capitalizing on the success of Sound & Color, Alabama Shakes’ Grammy-winning, chart-topping 2015 album, the Southern rock act shocked their fans by doing the opposite—and embarking on an indefinite hiatus. Eleven years, a global pandemic, three presidential terms, two solo albums from lead vocalist/guitarist Brittany Howard, and a personnel change later, the Shakes have returned with I Must Be Dreaming, a project that reminds listeners of how much they felt the void of their cathartic and, at times, unhinged anthems throughout one of the most tumultuous decades in modern American history. “Life was different for a lot of people,” Howard tells Apple Music of the world that welcomed Sound & Color and the one that forged I Must Be Dreaming. “There’s some nostalgia to it, and for myself as well. Playing [those] songs reminds me of the first time I saw the world.” But the “emotion is different because the world is different,” and the album reflects that: The Shakes—now a trio, still with Howard, Zac Cockrell on bass, and Heath Fogg on lead guitar—don’t shy away from meeting the current moment, and their feelings about it, throughout I Must Be Dreaming. The album’s name comes from “American Dream,” a surreal meditation on the waking nightmares wrought by climate change, gun violence, and other hot-button issues shaping political discourse. “I grew up learning you should treat people how you want to be treated, and you should put yourself in somebody else’s shoes sometimes,” Howard says. “It’s crazy seeing these same people who claim the same religion basically terrorizing people, human beings, in this nation. I’m looking around at my world, like, what happened? Maybe that’s a lesson America has to go through.” The Shakes believe that things can turn around, and they counter the malaise with ”I Feel Hope Coming,” a warm salve that recalls Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and other socially minded songs of ’70s soul. They extend this scrutiny and optimism to matters of the heart, too, whether they’re expressing a desperate confession of desire (“How Love’s Supposed to Go”), a hypnotizing appreciation of a new love (“Easy”), or the humble approach to a reconciliation (“Another Life”). “As scary as life will get, and as dark as it seems sometimes, there’s also all these opportunities for beauty and joy,” she says. “Sometimes when things are hard, those little things are smaller than usual, but they can mean so much more if you look at them in the right light.” I Must Be Dreaming is a reminder that the good things rarely come easy—but usually they arrive exactly when they’re supposed to, even if it took a minute, or a decade, to get there.