I have this one performance by American Mars emblazoned into my memory. A summer night I could easily go back to just by hearing any of their twang-strut/dreamscapes sweeping strange space-rock styles over dusky plains, even these, here, on their newest album.
This was a year ago. I’m not sure if cosmic circumstances just happened to align themselves abidingly to facilitate such sublimity, middle of the evening, outside, a grassy hill, a soft luminescence from trees slung with bulbs and the late July constellations searing faintly down from above.
This band could always be like a bonfire, bracing, entrancing, and warming in their Western-wrung rock churn. Elemental and elegant and you couldn’t turn away. Consummate musicians, really, not yer rockers in the shambolic torn-jean-glory sense, not your weekend warriors, but Americana-aristocrats, talented-types not fuckin’ around and finding intriguing blends of sensibilities spanning the rustle of country to the poignancy of folk to the valiant-chugging-pop of indie-rock and intricately layering it with dreamy/spacey-textures, clatter-cut percussion and wooed (or belted) by a distinctly Michigan-tinged nasal croon.
Chasing Vapor …Might as well be racing the sun.
That beat ramps you forth, kinda kicks at your heels, ya start moving, clenching your fists at the gritty growl of those fuzz-simmered guitars that get you to a running-pace, arms windmilling, you cough out the dust and breath and off….Then the tinny wail of that pedal-steel, oh, to me, it always sounds like the sun itself being whipped up from behind you, a warm ocher haze hovering up ‘round your shoulders, this propulsive country-rock balladry, like the amber hillside hiding the horizons are forced forth like an undulated grainy bedspread.
Waving you forth… “Moving on…”
That’s a flowery/lamboyant way of saying that American Mars, whose boots are often flecked with the cowpie-flakes of music-journo/bloggo tags like “folky/twangy/alt-country” sound much more rocking, if anything, on their fourth album, Chasing Vapor. It’ll be interesting to hear them transfer crash and soar riffers like “Manage Abandon” or taut toe-tapping, throaty anthems like “Cutters” into the principally acoustic “folk” venue of Ann Arbor’s Ark, on August 18th (for the proper release show of Vapor).
Rocking aside, the band: Thomas Trimble-vocals/guitars, Garth Girard-bass/vocals, Alex Trajano-drums/percussion and David Feeney-pedal steel/guitar/keyboard/vocals/production) display such refined sense for atmospherics, every corner of the song is filled, a meditative hum, a scurrying beat, celestial chimes or just strumming acoustic guitars – it’s that fullness of sound that evokes the outdoors, makes me go back to that concert in my head.
Like the outdoors, like, almost, it can’t be contained; like it’s the echo of myriad sounds, filling your headphones, filling the night. Barely contained – like, sometimes, a bonfire.
~
Americna Mars’ album release show – August 18th at The Ark in Ann Arbor – featuring special guests The Thornbills
Info:
http://americanmars.bandcamp.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Ark/157667664264778