Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There are few signs that the image of Americana formed from post war influence has lasted the course and remain as part of the collective aura of today; few idols in music have stayed the course from a period when Apple Pie and Picket Fences were more than just a staple of cliché and the formulaic, and those that have are often unwilling to divert away from the feelgood sessions that made their name and to continue to bask in the glow of the light of what made the genre so alluring, so enthralling in a world recovering from despair, the haunted masques of misery.
The American Pie may have been left to cool on the shelf far too long, the filling maybe too sweet to the tastebuds of public now raised on the bitterness of the 21st Century dejection and harsh realities it has faced, but it is still a classic that is filled with lyrics that have meaning; and one that seems to book end Don McLean’s latest release that comes almost of nowhere, the impressive American Boys.
To the outside world the new album maybe a surprise, but the effect, the understanding of the drama bubbling under the surface has arguably been waiting to be revealed to the light for a while, and whilst the recording could be considered the natural successor to the 1971 smash, it does stand alone in its reflections of a society that has altered and changed almost beyond recognition, and yet still clings to the joy of survival, grips with untainted devotion to a world undaunted by dogma and the rhetoric of modern upset.
The album title track looms large in the appreciation of the musicians who broke through and gave the world its voice after the war, and is followed by songs of clarity and enjoyment, and as Gypsy Road underscores a kind of philosophical recruitment, Stone Cold Gangster, the eye raising detachment that comes from The Meanest Girl, Truth and Fame, Resurrection Man, and Vacant Luxury, these dominate songs of muscle could be seen as perhaps polarising, opposing a modern ideal that no longer wishes to be seen in the same room as older sepia architypes, but still need to be heard, to be recognised for what they are; a reminder that those who grew up in the shadows of a new way of expression can still give thanks to those who shaped and formed the beauty of that original dream of American apple pie.
A sense of the magnificent underscores American Boys, an album whose essence is built on memory and a truth of response.
Ian D. Hall