The American’s newest LP is his most autobiographical to date, filled with trademark electronica sounds, but an overall mellower sound than previous, smoothly produced by Cate Le Bon, coloured by childhood recollections. Rich in humorous detail from cars to mother’s clothing, food and smells, the title track sets the pace and style of the album, mixing the particular and the general, from “Thompsons market for candy and pop” the the chorus and its line“the American Dream can cause scarring and some nasty bruising”. County Fair, also showing Le Bon’s stripped back influence, is a beautiful track, again vivid, long and profound (“We'll ride the Matterhorn and the double Ferris-Wheel/ We love to listen to the screams and the squeals / And it's hard to believe that the things we are seeing are real”). Mike and Julie is about Grant’s late teenage years in Denver, and Mike was his first gay sexual encounter. It’s full of awkwardness, and like many songs, car journeys, sights and sounds, all set “on a lonely back-country road just outside of Shawnee in Oklahoma”. Closing track Billy is rather lovely tune – wistful, sensitive and melancholy. By contrast, Grant’s more familiar bitchier side returns later in the album on the caustic and innuendo-filled Your Portfolio, but it is his more tender recollective songs that make the LP worth exploring. Out on Bella Union.
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