Dear reader, I’m going to let some daylight in upon the magic. When I listen to an album before reviewing it, I always make notes on each track. Sometimes I give them a heading. For this American Motors record, I wrote two words. “Uneasy Listening”.
If ever there was a record that refused to fit neatly into any of the boxes, this is it. One of the things that makes it so interesting is that they can do choruses. “Obvious”, for one, has a cracker. And then there’s singer Dustin Travis White coming out with this. “It’s not that I’m getting too old for this shit, it’s just that this shit’s getting pretty old.”
It’s a wonderful example of the wordplay, and that feeling of melancholy never seems far away. “One Chord” reckons “there are no good old days, there are just days”. There’s something about “No Horses” that’s just unsettling. One of the lines goes, “It’s like covering up a bad tattoo with an even worse one.” He keeps repeating, “I don’t know which is worse.” By that point, neither do I.
Now, I’m a huge fan of bands like The Hold Steady and Therapy?. They go about things their own way and they’ve got their own sound. “5408 Big Tyler” made me think of Craig Finn. It’s the stream of consciousness that does it. White’s delivery is his own, but you can hear why my mind went there. “Bring back shame,” he says at one point. We could probably do with a bit of that.
“Margaritaville Pt. 2” sounds like the worst place in the world to go on holiday. The drinks are free, they tell us, which is where the similarities with “Club Tropicana” end. Wham! could make you want to go there. This one swirls and lurks, ready for its attack. There’s a psychic on the telephone, too. Can’t see the future at all.
“Marlboro Miles” was a single, and it’s about as far removed from the concept of a single as anything could be. Then “Tragedy” reckons it ain’t no fun waking up on the bathroom floor. Good to know. I probably won’t do it. And what did I write next to “Gold Star”? “Lack of trust.” That just about covers it.
American Motors are a bunch of indie lifers. They made this with J. Robbins of Jawbox, and you can hear that they’ve spent their lives in and around this music. Try to pick out the obvious single and you could be here all day. If you’re looking for something interesting, challenging and, I don’t know, captivating, even if you can’t quite say why, “Functional Music” performs that function perfectly.
Rating: 8.5/10
