As a genre, Americana is fueled by the intangible as much as the tangible. The rootsy, country-tinged indie-rock arrangements, the naturalistic narratives and grounded, often fatalistic wisdom are the foundations. What elevates the genre\u2019s finest examples is harder to pin down, but if pressed I\u2019d call it integrity. A willingness to dig deep and put yourself out there emotionally, to not just create but inhabit your songs.<\/p>\n
Fresh from their strong 2013 LP Destination Blues<\/i>, Long Island quartet Butchers Blind returns this month with A Place In America<\/i>, a six-song EP that\u2019s frustrating only in its brevity. Simply put, this is the most ambitious and accomplished set of tunes yet from Pete Mancini (vocals, guitar, songwriting), Paul Anthony (drums, harmony vocals), Brian Reilly (bass) and Christopher Smith (piano and organ).<\/p>\n
The heart and soul of the set resides in three songs, a sort of 21st century American Gothic trilogy. Opener \u201cDead Horses\u201d starts out running off the piano line before building toward a powerful crescendo. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to say you\u2019re someone when your best is not good enough,\u201d sings Mancini, his naturally plaintive voice taking on a hint of Don Henley rasp. (There\u2019s a sort of laconic vulnerability to his voice that inevitably reminds of Jeff Tweedy as well.)<\/p>\n
Next up is the truly stunning \u201cBlack & White Dreams.\u201d Against a surging musical backdrop, Mancini sings:<\/p>\n
\u201cGoodbye and good luck
It\u2019s all been written before
Just climb this ladder
To keep the wolves from the door
I\u2019m livin\u2019 hand to mouth
In this whitewashed town
You spend your whole life
Tryin\u2019 to get out<\/p>\n
(Chorus)
I want to feel complete
Leave something behind like the names of these streets
A spark in the eye of those who believed in the great generation
Black and white dreams\u201d<\/p>\n
Mancini\u2019s artful lyric lays out the bankruptcy of a fantasy that\u2019s haunted the nation for too long, blind nostalgia for a quote-unquote simpler time whose dark undercurrents and still-reverberating consequences are conveniently ignored in memory. <\/p>\n
\u201cTwisting In The Wind\u201d offers a momentary detour, a Hammond-heavy barroom thumper singalong about another hapless romantic chasing dreams that are \u201cgoing down in flames.\u201d And then we get to the heart of the matter, the third act of the aforementioned trilogy, \u201cA Place In America.\u201d Starting out slow and stately with just piano and acoustic, Mancini intones:<\/p>\n
\u201cI see the hearts and minds
Of a simpler time
I feel the cold embrace
Through tangled wires
We paid our dues
We got fenced-in blues
Another broken-glass past
All misconstrued\u00a0 <\/p>\n
I\u2019m watchin\u2019 it all go down on a screen
They\u2019re chasin\u2019 their Manhattans and their dreams
Some of us grow old and drown
Bitter rants and screams
Some of us find a place in America\u201d <\/p>\n
From there, Mancini essays a landscape of \u201cbroken homes\u201d and \u201cdead-end jobs\u201d until in the fourth minute, the song finds another gear, moving into a heavier section as Mancini cries out \u201cI wish I had a place in America\u201d with increasing urgency as the music gets bigger and harder and angrier all around him. There\u2019s no getting around it; this song locates and taps into the same pooling reservoir of desperation Springsteen sang about on The River<\/i> and Nebraska<\/i>, still haunting us a generation later. It\u2019s cinemascope songwriting backed by powerhouse performance.<\/p>\n
The final pair of tracks are less fraught but plenty strong. \u201cGhosts\u201d is an easygoing bit of barroom philosophy (\u201cTo be nineteen, to laugh and scream \/ Like ghosts of who we were\u201d) with a sweet lap steel solo. And closer \u201cOnly Love\u201d is a rolling, ringing mid-tempo love song, offering the only hopeful note on this disc in its closing moments: \u201cIt\u2019s taken me so long \/ I think I\u2019ve got it right \/ I see in your eyes \/ Only love, only love.\u201d <\/p>\n