Because the USA is such a vast, sprawling place, incorporating a whole plethora of different cultures and dynamics and philosophies, and yet at the same time sharing a generally distinctive identity with codified mythology, it inspires many artists to try and reflect that in their music. This week, we’re looking at seven artists who feature America in either their band name or their album title. No Spotify links this week as weirdly half of these albums weren’t on Spotify.
David Ackles, ‘American Gothic’
This guy was a singer-songwriter who was a big influence on Elton John (among others), but his records were completely ignored at the time and even now, less than 5% of the Listchallenges.com community had listened to this album. It’s a sort of theatrical vaudeville heavy on Americana and Brechtian oompah, somewhere between Scott Walker and Nick Cave, between Rufus Wainwright and Danny Elfman. Ackles, who looked kind of like a 70s cop show actor, was already in his mid-30s when he released this, his third and penultimate album. It’s an album that’s easier to appreciate as a fellow architect than as an aesthete: I can admire the craft but the songs didn’t draw me in.
American Music Club, ‘California’
American Music Club are a Mark Eitzel band who recorded in the 80s and 90s and who are often associated with sadcore: this album is mostly slow, melancholy, vaguely country-ish alt.rock. There’s a pedal steel on a couple of the tracks to augment the Nashville tinge, but the album didn’t yield many surprises apart from the Stooges-and-harmonica mis-step of ‘Bad Liquor’.
Chicago, ‘Chicago Transit Authority’
Recorded in 1969, this is the band’s debut album and, much to the delight of their skeptical record label, a double. It is an eclectic yet coherent combination of brassy jazz-rock, Supertramp-ian ballads, Hendrix noodling and politically-charged anti-Vietnam material. Gets a bit boring in the middle with the lengthy guitar digressions. Amazingly, the band are still going, having released over 30 albums, albeit without guitarist Terry Kath, who died in 1978 by accidentally shooting himself in the head.
Drive Like Jehu, ‘Yank Crime’
I’d never previously heard of DLJ before they were stiffed on the All Tomorrow’s Parties that they were curating, but I was mildly familiar with guitarist John Reis’s chart-troubling later band Rocket From The Crypt. This is my first listen to them. Recorded in 1994, this album still sounds incredibly fresh, mainly because of the genres it deals in: it’s an album of complicated, lengthy, aggressively mathcore-ish emo which sounds like it came out in the last ten years, not 23 years ago. There’s only nine songs over 53 minutes here, and the band’s legacy is apparent in later bands like Rival Schools, Hundred Reasons and no doubt many others. Drummer Mark Trombino went on to helm records by Jimmy Eat World and Blink-182 and presumably made millions of dollars out of emo. Good on him.
Curtis Mayfield, ‘There’s No Place Like America Today’
Another one that few of the Listchallenges community had heard, and Mayfield’s final appearance on the list. Characterised by Curtis’s wah-wah guitar and falsetto, this lushly-orchestrated album is a cool place to hang out for 40 minutes. It creates a consistent atmosphere, stabilised by a lack of tempo shifting, even if the melodies rarely grip. I think my favourite album by this guy is his first, ‘Curtis’, which features ‘Move On Up’.
Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson, ‘Winter in America’
GSH is seen as a big influence to early hip-hop, although like fellow pioneers The Last Poets, the stuff that inspired rappers is more easily understood as post-Beat: spoken word poetry over jazzy keyboards. Here, GSH alternates between poetry and soulful singing, while Jackson contributes 4am jazz club motifs on acoustic and electric pianos and a rhythm section gently accompanies. Okay, but more an album that sounds cool rather than lovable. Confusingly, the song ‘Winter in America’ is on the next album.
The United States of America, ‘The United States of America’
“Reality is temporary,” Dorothy Moskovitz sings halfway through an album apparently dedicated to proving it. This was a trio of weird Commies who got some knackered science lab equipment to make spacey ‘Blake’s 7’ noises and recruited a rhythm section to try and ground the music on planet Earth. Every so often, some olde calliopes play excerpts from Sousa or whatever before someone makes some sci-fi effects on an electric violin or a ring modulator or something. The band’s name is apt: they celebrate the past of American music while violently trying to wrestle it forwards into the atomic age. Sadly, though, their efforts were abortive: this is their only album before they disintegrated.
For the next two weeks, we’re on Christmas break, so the updates will be a round-up of some of the best albums on the list that I’d already heard when I started this project. (Eventually, all the albums will be on the blog).
Status update: 721 listened to (72%), 280 remain.
JT Listens To 1001 Albums 