I grew up in a jazz-loving household, not jazz as stuffy, artistic presumption, but simply the music of the house. One knew that there were kinds of jazz, and each had its place (the exception was fusion, that everyone agreed had none at all). Glenn Miller, for example, was considered sufficiently tame that his albums were bedtime music. (‘Jazz for Republicans’ was my father’s teasing view of Miller’s conventionality.)
There’s great opportunity for a person or household that holds to uncommon music, art, or literature: one finds something novel there and then, and is primed to enjoy new experiences later. The chance to review an album — something I wouldn’t have imagined even a few years ago — doesn’t seem daunting, but is instead inviting.
It’s in that spirit that I’ve accepted a recommendation to review Ben Sommer’s america’d, an album of eight prog rock songs. It’s a fine album, one that I think you’re sure to enjoy, too.
Although you may find your own reference, Sommer’s work reminds me — in the best way — of the late Warren Zevon’s songs, with a sharp and insightful perspective on American life. Zevon, himself, was a successor to a tradition of political songwriters, including many in the folk movement.
(Quick aside on Zevon: his perceptiveness wasn’t always found outside the recording sudio. I once met a former girlfriend of his, who was Zevon’s former girlfriend because he gave her a small kitchen appliance on a supposedly sentimental occasion.)
There are eight songs on america’d, and there’s a consistent theme of liberty — of the individual free of state, bureucaracy, opperssive communalism — that runs through the album. Good and enduring political songs aren’t good and enduring because they extoll the virtues of the state, but beacuse they see its vices. That’s very much true on america’d.
It’s well past time, for example, that someone wrote a song about Kissinger, and in Henry Kissinger Sommer has him right: “…flowering of evil genius/The ends achieved would justify to deceive us…” That’s about right, I’d say — calculating beyond the limits of normal compassion, producing a policy by turns amoral and immoral. If Watchmen showed Nixon and Kissinger as odd (and they were), Sommer describes the danger underneath that kind of ‘odd.’
In particular, I think you’ll like and remember Adult Children, a witty, biting take on the child-like selfishness that grips so many: “…we’re eating hamburgers and frosties/and jelly donuts, too/and if we get a little hefty/we’re gonna lawyer up and sue…” I wish the song weren’t so true, but I’m glad that Sommer writes candidly.
It’s not for lyrics alone that you’ll remember Adult Children; the mimicing of a baby’s crying — but meant from the mouths of adult babes, so to speak — is both clever and catchy. You’ll want to hear the song more than once, and from it explore more of Sommer’s work.
America’d takes insight, pours it into clever lyrics, cradles those lyrics in fine guitar work, and offers a memorable album as a result.
Enjoy!
Adams’s rating, out of four stars:
