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American Aquarium - Lamentations
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American Aquarium - Lamentations


Dec 23, 2022, 9:34 PM

Album of the Year, so far

https://open.spotify.com/album/16cNE8Er5s7OeJAe0Ki3vC?si=t7kRFUkhRa6sCjJVHglkYA

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BJ Barham is one of the most underrated songwriters on the


May 1, 2020, 2:04 PM

planet. If you haven't been watching his Wednesday/Sunday streams, he usually does a whole album or a theme and tells stories behind the songs. There are few better than him working today.

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Eh.... a few good songs, but...


May 1, 2020, 2:47 PM

At what point do we get tired of bitter southerners all trying to write songs like they're the Drive-By Truckers? I like most of the music, but the message is tired. Every southern band in the last few years has had similar collections of songs with almost the same message.

You've got the sort of faux-non-partisan cynicism of songs like Me+Mine (Lamentations) that show some level of empathy for "Me+Mine," but which ultimately are just about something that's been left behind. For what, though? This is good song-writing and I really enjoyed the blues-rocky breakdown, but it's just kind of stale.

"What are you supposed to do,
When the God you're prayin' to
Up and goes missin'?
Leaves a trail on unpaid bills
Broken homes and opioid addiction
And then a politian shows up
Promisin' that
He'll return the jobs
That God himself could not bring back

Fool me once, shame on you
Fool me twice, shame on me
Yeah, that's the day I gave up
On the American dream
...

Neither the left or the right
Are gonna fight for folks stuck in between
The way things really are
The American dream"


Something similar is going on with "Better South," which is catchy but not quite as good a song as "Me+Mine" because it's more explicitly political and less elegiac and poetic. We get it, you like a lot about the south, but there are some things you'd change if it were up to you. Me too, and probably true for just about anybody. But, ultimately, if you think where the south is now represents "one step forward and two steps back," then you're actually just writing a politically partisan song. Then there's the sort of noxious line about how the south is "always late [to the right side of history]," which, again is just boring partisanship. So while this song is more hopeful than the earlier song where the American dream is given up on, you still wonder whether what the writer is talking about is even "southern" in any way other than geography.

Definitely an entertaining album. I'd just like to hear something different from our bitter southerners (there's even the requisite call to legalize marijuana, which this time is offered as a way to save the old tobacco farmers). Or, maybe, let's hear from some southerners who haven't given up on the American dream, who believe in a better south, but who still believe in the "God you're prayin' to" and who don't presume to have the kind of abstract perspective they'd need to have to know which way history should and will go.

I'm not even sure who that would be, but ultimately I think the best musical expressions of the southern sensibility are when writers dig into historical narrative or when they immerse us into actual southern life. Maybe that's why I think the most memorable song on the album is "The Luckier You Get."

Message was edited by: camcgee®


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I think my favorite album of the year is Kingdom in My Mind


May 1, 2020, 3:00 PM

by the Wood Brothers. But I would have to try to remember who else has released an album this year before I could really decide.

https://open.spotify.com/album/2DcaMqz70T997l2zEdkWQh


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Pacific Range - High Upon the Mountain


May 1, 2020, 3:31 PM

Think a slightly more psychedelic and less country version of the Flying Burrito Brothers

https://open.spotify.com/album/4D7i2DczT5MQj0gU0vAYGK?si=T6PL_O8tS4ak4ZlSZ7_c9g

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ur wrong***


May 1, 2020, 3:26 PM [ in reply to Eh.... a few good songs, but... ]



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Thanks for the share. Enjoying this


May 1, 2020, 3:39 PM

:)

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