American Aquarium: Lamentations
On September 1, 2019 American Aquarium announced that they were going into the studio to record their 8th studio album, Lamentations, with a crowd funding request. Just as they had done with their previous five albums. Within 24 hours they had gotten 22% of their projected budget. In just over two weeks they had gotten 106% of their projected budget. At that point, they went into the studio with Shooter Jennings as their producer. Originally, they projected it would take two months to crowd fund this project. I guess they didn't realize the impact that they had made on the Americana/Roots Rock music scene with their previous work and how bad we wanted to hear some new material from them. Oh ye of little faith. This new album, as a whole, has far more weight in terms of subject matter and composition than their previous works, denoting greater skill and maturity in their song writing.
The first track and title track to the album is “Me + Mine (Lamentations).” This one, frankly, hits me hard because I can relate to it. I live in a small rural town 30 miles east of Seattle. I have seen how big food and big agro has been destroying the small Mom & Pop farms and leaving small towns to wonder what to do next. Such things change the town and its people, initially for the worse, and some (people and towns) never recover. Often, the town just disappears off the map.
These are BJ’s lamentations. His lyrics are hard to hear, especially if you have seen this happen. It’s a sneering disillusionment to what we have been taught about achieving the American dream. These are some hard words from someone who has seen small towns near his home just disintegrate. The song includes issues of politics, social class and has implications of worker exploitation. “"It's like we don't matter," momma said/ "Or at least that's how it seems"/ And that's the day I woke up from the American dream […] These lamentations are getting too damned hard to sing/ These lamentations are going to be the death of me.”
Musically, “Me + Mine (Lamentations)” starts out simple - keyboard in place of a bass guitar, acoustic guitar and vocals. Drums and cymbals for emphasis… all of this gives the song a “weight” and “maturity” that we haven’t seen to this level before in BJ’s songwriting. Along the line of “less is more” and it works well. Drums come in to add a simple beat. If you listen carefully, you can hear guitar and pedal steel also add effect. In the second verse, the keyboard gets more dominant and adds further effect. After the second verse, there is a long instrumental section where they follow the general musical theme, but it gets dissonant, I’d guess, by design.
Photo By Cal Quinn
“Before The Dogwood Blooms” is a going-away, but not a goodbye song. A guy who makes his living on the road and must go and get to work. He doesn’t want to leave his girl, so he is reassuring her that while he has to go that he will be back in a couple of weeks, “before the dogwood blooms.”
Overall, it’s a fun song that starts with BJ declaring, “Kiss me quick honey/ I can’t stay long.” It’s not an overly romantic piece, by any stretch. It's more like “practical romance.” Let’s take the time we have together now, then we can take more when I get back. It is a reflection on our modern age and frames it in terms of how we love each other these days when time is in short supply and money doesn’t go as far as it used to.
The next track is “Six Years Come September” is another stark, heartbreaking, piece involving reflection on a life of alcoholism, death, loss and heartbreaking regret that haunts him years later. I don’t want to say too much here… you should hear it for yourself. Though the lyrics are haunting, it very well could become a favorite of yours, as it is mine. “I ain't had a drop to drink since the day that you left me/ Six years come September, I've been cursed with this clarity/ I had to stare in the mirror yellin' at a stranger looking back at me/ And the ghost of the man I could've been still haunts all my dreams.”
The song unfolds to tell how this loss occurred then ends with the statement “I regretted it then, I regret it now and I guess I always will.” Musically it has a two step beat to it with pedal steel as the lead instrument with great use of keyboard, especially near the end, at the crescendo.
Another favorite of mine is “Brightleaf + Burley.” If you are a fan of a crying pedal steel guitar, you’ll love the intro. That and the drums are the lead instruments. This song revisits the theme of how rural America is fading, only here BJ takes more of a defiant tone and the song tends, by its title, to center around the tobacco industry. And the first line really sets the tone. “Our name’s been on that mailbox the last 100 years/ We’re the walking definition of blood, sweat and tears,” and the story just keeps getting better from there.
This song, like many of the songs on this record, demonstrates the band’s growing skill and brilliance in storytelling through the lyrics. “I’ve been wandering these roads since I was three years old/ Watching the men I thought were Gods turn green leaves into gold/ Now all the fields they all lay empty, curin’ barns are growin’ cold/ All the while another cash crop just beggin’ to be sold/ Yeah, we got the infrastructure/ Lord knows we got the will/ But a solution to a problem doesn’t pay that problem's bills.”
“Brightleaf + Burley” has a faster beat and is danceable, but I just prefer to drive through town with this coming out of my speakers, cranked WAAAYYY UP!
“The Luckier You Get” is hot on its heels. This was a pre-album release single and has been getting some good airplay. It’s a more rocking version of something my mom used to tell me when I was a boy. She’d say, “God help those who help themselves.” Which is now translated to, “The harder you work, the luckier you get/ The more you get done, boy, the less you’ll regret/ Write it down so you never forget/ the harder you work, the luckier you get.”
The song follows the theme of making your own luck through hard work and persistence, and who can’t appreciate a reminder like that these days? The song is a loud rock song with a fast beat. I, personally, wouldn’t dance to it, but I could listen to it on repeat to keep the energy up.
Another “loved and lost” song is “The Day I Learned to Lie to You.” What a title! It neatly sums up the song and the regret. Yet another lamentation. It’s a slower piece that starts with just piano and vocals. It then turns into a full band song, with a horn section added, and man, does that work! And, yet again, the lyrics steal the show. He compares the lies he told to an old oak tree growing in their front yard and then… “Without warning late last May/ A branch snapped and then gave way/ Tumbled down and tore our home apart/ Yeah, it tumbled down and tore right through your heart.”
“The Long Haul,” another single pre-album release, has a dual personality. It’s a sad-sounding, feel-good song. BJ is examining his journey of getting and staying sober. He starts with relating how the songwriting process is now different. He refers to how some people around him think he has lost his edge and how some people who were enablers to an alcoholic can be cruel because he has changed. Having struggled some with this myself, I get it and I remember those people. His insight really shines with his line, "See, the hardest part of getin' sober/ Is learnin' a drinkin' buddy ain't the same thing as a friend/ Just like the hardest part of startin' over/ Is admittin' to yourself that somethin' has come to an end." TRUTH!!
It’s a hard and rugged reality to face. But, ultimately, it’s worth it. The chorus of the song doesn’t, on its surface, sound hopeful. However, to anyone who has ever walked this road these words give you hope. "I'm in it for the long haul/ I'm here until the work's done/ I ain't ever been the kinda guy that's gonna cut and run/ So I'll pick myself up every time I fall/ Baby, I'm in it for the long haul."
The song is more of a slower, contemplative piece. In other words, it makes you think. It starts with piano, drums and guitar. The pedal steel fades in with the bass. My impression on this is that while it’s not an up tempo foot stompin’ kind of song, it's written with gratitude. Gratitude to his friends, family, band, fans and to what his sobriety has brought him, a quieter mind and peace in his being.
This album has 10 original, inspired, tracks.
1. Me + Mine (Lamentations)
2. Before The Dogwood Blooms
3. Six Years Come September
4. Starts With You
5. Brightleaf + Burley
6. The Luckier You Get
7. The Day I Learned To Lie To You
8. A Better South
9. How Wicked I Was
10. The Long Haul
This album is a result of 20 years of being on the road, writing songs and observing our culture; how it has changed and all the things that divide us. BJ is writing important songs that bring these things to light and, maybe, help us heal. BJ, in his own words about this album said, “It feels really good to be in my mid-30s, writing songs that I think matter. I think when you listen to this record, something is going to change in you. You’re going to feel something. That’s the most important part of songwriting: making someone feel.”
And it will make you feel.
Cover Photo By Joshua Black Wilkins
Photo in the article By Cal Quinn