In 1971, after three-plus years of scrapping their way through clubs and theaters, the great British pub band Mott The Hoople decided they\u2019d had enough. When budding superstar David Bowie\u2014in the process of recording the Ziggy Stardust<\/i> album at the time\u2014heard about the group\u2019s impending demise, he gathered the band and more or less told them no, you can\u2019t quit, I won\u2019t let you. He gave them a song\u2014\u201cAll The Young Dudes\u201d\u2014and produced their album of the same name, which catapulted them high into the charts for the first time. In the end the band only managed to flail onward for two and a half more years before imploding again, but by then they had cemented a legend that had been more like a rumor before Bowie came along.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a story I\u2019ve been familiar with for decades that came to mind when I first heard the tale of this album. American Aquarium, led by singer-songwriter BJ Barham, had been slugging it out for six years playing 200-plus live dates a year in small venues across the American Southeast when they reached what felt like their own personal Waterloo. In the process of working up songs for what they had already decided would be the band\u2019s final album, Barham and friends connected with Jason Isbell, who rallied the troops and came in to produce and play on this album, 2012\u2019s Burn.Flicker.Die.<\/i> While the lineup that delivered the album is long gone, Barham continues to fly the American Aquarium flag today.<\/p>\n
Barham was tagged early as a \u201cSpringsteen of the South,\u201d and for once the lazy act of slapping a pithy label on something feels like it\u2019s actually pretty on the nose. His songs tell bracingly honest stories of fully realized, thoroughly damaged characters navigating naturalistic situations and landscapes, the only real variations being substituting his native Carolinas for New Jersey and adding country-rock elements like steel guitar. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Opener \u201cCape Fear River\u201d sets the tone with a narrative that takes cues from \u201cThe River\u201d while painting a devastating picture of growing up in the modern South: \u201cYou either get locked up or you join the corp \/ Or you work the grill at Pete\u2019s burgers and more \/ Or you buy a map and you pick a spot and you drive as fast as you can.\u201d It\u2019s an edgy ode to getting out, driven hard by Isbell and the band.<\/p>\n
\u201cSt. Mary\u2019s\u201d brings even more propulsion and urgency as Barham paints a picture of life that\u2019s both floodlit and full of dark shadows, a local hangout \u201cWhere American girls drink Mexican beer \/ And city boys sing small town hymns.\u201d The familiar heartland rock breakdowns in the arrangement seem almost ironic here, a nod to the harder reality underlying those early Mellencamp songs. <\/p>\n
\u201cLonely Ain\u2019t Easy\u201d feels like it could have been the song that convinced Isbell to throw in with Barham and company; he has to have played a role in giving this stately ballad the keystone number three slot on the record. \u201cThe only thing certain is we end up alone,\u201d sings Barham, weariness creeping into his voice. \u201cSee I followed the rules and I played the part \/ And all I\u2019ve got left is this tin man heart\u2026 Lonely ain\u2019t easy \/ Lonely ain\u2019t kind \/ Lonely won\u2019t leave me \/ She\u2019s a good friend of mine.\u201d The flair and wit of Barham\u2019s words coupled with his passionate delivery multiplies their impact. <\/p>\n
Around this point in many albums you begin to listen for a drop-off in quality, but it never comes. \u201cAbe Lincoln\u201d is a terrific jangly rocker with a ringing solo and a killer closing line: \u201cStaring out the window like an angel divine \/ Just another kiss that will never be mine.\u201d The steady-building road ballad \u201cJacksonville\u201d finds Barham doing his best Springsteen, making you feel like the stakes he\u2019s singing about are real: \u201cIf I make it out alive, I\u2018ll call, you know I will \/ If I can just survive just one more night in Jacksonville.\u201d <\/p>\n
The ghost of Bruce similarly haunts the gritty, anthemic title track, whose relentless backbeat, thrumming Hammond organ and fulsome background vocal choruses specifically call back to Born To Run<\/i>, even as steel guitar provides a winsome cry at the heart of the song. \u201cEvery night I\u2019m my own worst enemy \/ I\u2019ll find a way to quit when they bury me \/ \u2019Cause I can\u2019t turn down the drinks when they\u2019re free.\u201d (Thankfully, Barham got sober in the mid-twenty-teens, a couple of years after Isbell did.)<\/p>\n
The fatalistic autobiographical narratives come to a head in \u201cCasualties\u201d as Barham sings \u201cWe ain\u2019t never going to make it like I thought we would \/ So why can\u2019t we just pack our bags and say we did the best we could\u2026 If the road is where you live, boy \/ The road is where you\u2019ll die.\u201d It\u2019s a dark, billowing tune about having your dreams defeated again and again and still craving the battle. And while the chorus feels a bit overcooked, the verses offer a powerful portrait-slash-indictment of the rock and roll life.<\/p>\n
The same theme is arranged as an urgent, lilting rocker in the ironically titled \u201cSavannah Almost Killed Me\u201d as Barham locates one of the upsides of life on the road: \u201cShe was a Betty Davis double \/ With diamonds on her knuckles \/ And she knew every word to \u2018Born To Run\u2019.\u201d The penultimate, heartfelt ballad \u201cNorthern Lights\u201d finds Barham doing more than just winking at one of his major influences; his vocals on the first verse could pass for a Springsteen outtake.<\/p>\n
The album finishes up just like it should, with a storming rocker that opens with one of Barham\u2019s most evocative scene-setters: \u201cWe got part time jobs and full time addictions \/ We talk about god and his best works of fiction \/ A Pabst Blue Ribbon in a can kinda Saturday night.\u201d Three lines in and you already feel like you know everything important about these characters.<\/p>\n
American Aquarium\u2019s Burn.Flicker.Die.<\/i> isn\u2019t without flaws, but it\u2019s one of those albums where even the flaws have a beauty to them. It\u2019s a collection that\u2019s overflowing with heart and artistry and more than a hint of desperation, a half-court heave at the buzzer that caroms straight up off the rim and then drops right through. And it took BJ Barham from the verge of giving up to a career doing what he clearly loves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10618],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-46277","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-american-aquarium","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46277"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}