So Fryxell and I got teamed up for the Recc thread, and though I know the guy, I can't remember a single time I had really paid attention to his music posts and neither of us post that much anyway - so I went into this game with little amusement, but he gave me something new and I thank him for it.


American Aquarium - Small Town Hymns

It's actually surprising that I hadn't heard this album last year when it came out. Though my Year End List might not have made it apparent, 2010 was a really huge year for me to get back into country, folk and the Americana scene in general and spent a huge chunk of July through October checking out new bands I would find on the various great blogs on the genre. I'd actually seen American Aquarium mentioned a handful of times, knew they played some shows with musicians whose albums last year I really enjoyed and yet I still didn't look for this album. Inexplicable really.

So thanks for forcing it on me Fryxell, because I really like it.

I remember Ninebullets posted a review about the album, which I actually read as I downloaded this album for this thread and a good chunk of the review has it absolutely right. It's still the sound of a young band coming into their own, but the album is great because of the way feeling it communicates. Sonically, this it might be a bit paint-by-the-numbers rough "alt. country", but it's a great sound and the band pulls it off really well. Musically, they're very similar to Lucero and early 00s Drive-By Truckers and while there is no shortage of bands trying to emulate that sound, American Aquarium have enough chops to make it work.

A big portion of that is the front man's voice, which is just a glorious, emotive, gruff country style voice - the thing that makes you just want to drink beers alone with the lights out. I love this sound, lots of the board loves this sound and for that - the album is great, superficially at the very least.

The sole thing that bugs me about the group is the songwriting, which is a bit too one-note to remain interesting - and even a bit cringeworthy at times. It suffers from that same thing that a lot of your favorite local alt. country bands suffer from, in that the lyrics try very hard to be personal, be real, to fit interesting words and stories into them and sometimes it works, but sometimes it's really just...uncomfortable. It's just not really believable a lot of the time. I can't offer any advice on how to improve it, or to vary the songwriting, but the style does grow a bit tiresome and just weary as hell after 10 tracks. When Patterson Hood sings this kind of stuff, I believe it, but most others? It just comes off as imitation, as fake and basically like the songwriter is trying to embody this person they're not, convincing themselves mid-song even. Like I said, it makes it good for drinking beers alone, but it's probably not something you're going to want to do very often.

Anyway, thanks for this Fryxell, I'm more than happy to have added this to my collection.