3 out of 5

Label: The Ghost is Clear Records; Expert Work Records

Produced by: J. Robbins

This is the most midwest-vibed record I’ve ever heard. I realize that means I’m characterizing all of the midwest as a decaying landscape stuck in social loops, but… sure: I’m from there; I don’t mind it. American Motors aren’t from there, meanwhile – they’re from Pennsylvania and Texas – and have chosen a band name that brings to mind rather country-wide symbology, as well as an album name that then distills that into a currently disliked way of bucketing all forms of media: as content. So maybe I need to expand my definition of the midwest to subsume, like, everything.

That said, American Motors’ at least musically scoops up and swirls together a lot of the rock and hardcore sounds that come out of that aforementioned region: grunge-backed, rootsy punk that sits somewhere between DC angst and New York sludge; off-tempo, one-drink-away-from-no-wave rock; all generally delivered with a snarl that’s experiencing malaise to varying degrees. Admittedly this take is still being shaped by my listening habits, but I feel like we have some labels now like The Ghost Is Clear Records and Expert Work that are catering to exactly those sounds, and wouldn’t ya know: Content is a cross-release from those exact labels.

Which goes back to my initial statement: the entire A-side of this album is – for those down with moody rock about modern living malaise – nearly perfect. The lyrics are a poetic stumble of imagery of crumbling buildings and the affects of cyclical capitalism, i.e. prosperous jobs giving way to shittier versions of the same, or local flavor replaced by homogeny. The pared down sound of minimalist guitar strums and a marching beat mirrors the imagery, with slightly off-timed vocals monotoning into occasional bursts of emotion – flashes of distortion and drums pounding in pursuit alongside – providing the bubbling-but-not-boiling fury of midwestern niceties. It’s also a bit raw, as the pace stutters on occasion, or the singer can’t quite hit that note, but therein lies charm as well; it’s that inner push-and-pull that makes bands like Shellac or Young Windows particularly effective.

But: the B-side.

My personal narrative here is that American Motors started as a two-piece, expanded to three, but didn’t quite figure out how to adapt their stripped down vibe to a three person act. And the B-side of the album represents that. While I think I’d still likely somewhat tire of ‘Content’ by the B-side anyway – the range of imagery starts to feel limited; some sharp lines are still uttered, but the pattern of speech and song structure is mostly explored after 3 or 4 songs – it’s the lack of that aforementioned push and pull on the B-side that leaves me hangin’. Whether there’s truth to my narrative or it was purposeful sequencing, the last three tracks on the album “expand” the sound to something that is still of the 90s era from which the band has been inspired, but is watered down. Since we have J. Robbins on the boards here, I’ll frame it around the Jawbox sound: Jawbox’s accessible punk act was an example of how a band could successfully go “mainstream,” but, inevitably, the wave of acts that followed were moreso taking from the mainstream version of Jawbox, and after a series of ellipses, we have, like Thursday. American Motors is by no means Thursday, but the end of ‘Content’ is more in line with that very term: its workman-like music; it’s not as dynamic as what preceded on the A-side. Switching back to J. Robbins again, this unfortunately doesn’t work well with (to my ears) the producer’s talents, as I think he works best with different ends of the sound spectrum: minimal or loud. Stuff that just kind of “rocks,” which is what the end of ‘Content’ does, loses its edges in Robbins’ hands.

All of this is enough of a dropoff in appeal to land the album with a more average rating. American Motors are definitely a band worth paying attention to – that A-side is impactful; there’s definitely a unique formula at play there – but if there was some type of meta commentary on the watering down of things over time, as represented by ‘Content’ getting more generic as the album proceeds… well… I’d be okay with forsaking the commentary for some tighter, harder-hitting tracks.