June found us turning our focus to America: specifically in an attempt to broaden the musical definition of the term Americana. For far too long, Americana has merely been a stand-in term for a very narrow brand of music: typically that which encompasses ‘traditional’ themes, and is performed (mostly) by white men on acoustic instruments. And while there’s still some of that to be found here, the idea was to find other examples of music that is capable of reflecting quintessentially American themes and settings.
And it seems that debut albums are a particularly fertile ground for these examples. After all, debuts are typically the records in which their creators are most influenced by — and most in tune with — the settings that they know most intimately. Call them ‘honest’ or ‘authentic’ if you must, but these are the albums that tend to sound — and feel — the most like home.
Instead of pulling brief excerpts from our daily mini-reviews, this month we’re specifically highlighting the settings that these thirty records evoke. We’ll be shifting our emphasis to a new theme in July. To see those picks in real-time — and to read our past and future mini-reviews in full — give our Instagram and Facebook pages a follow.
June 1 (#152)
This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About
(1996)
Rating: 8.9
Setting: A mostly abandoned highway; somewhere in the ‘lonesome crowded west.‘
Setting: A tiny beach town along the Eastern Seaboard, on the last few days of summer.
Setting: The creaky front porch of a modest home in the Appalachian foothills.
Setting: A small border town at nightfall.
Setting: A hot summer day in the Queensbridge housing projects.
Setting: An early autumn afternoon on the quad at Columbia University.
Setting: ‘Flyover country,’ but from a birds-eye view.
Setting: A long-abandoned, kudzu covered rail trestle, off of the beaten path in the rural South.
Setting: Inner-city Detroit, after the riots.
Setting: Autumn in New England.
Setting: A tiny logging town in the Pacific Northwest, as afternoon turns to evening.
Setting: Springtime in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Setting: An abandoned factory in the deindustrialized Midwest.
Setting: Winter in a remote cabin along the Great Lakes.
Setting: Creekside at sunset.
Setting: An early summer evening in East Point.
Setting: A quiet cove on the Chesapeake Bay.
Setting: The town that you grew up in — after a few years spent away.
Setting: A western highway, under dark storm clouds.
Setting: A secluded forest deep within the Eastern Woodlands.
Setting: A suburban Midwest garage.
Setting: Aboard a train moving slowly across the landscape.
Setting: A campfire under a new moon.
Setting: A poorly lit subway platform.
Setting: The rural South, captured in a grainy photograph.
Setting: A meadow surrounded by golden aspen trees.
Setting: A Minneapolis bar, as the Saturday night crowd starts to gather.
Setting: A dark forest, in the sleepy west of the woody east.
Setting: A dilapidated, overgrown churchyard.
Setting: On the road to someplace better…
