Description
Label Review.
2017 album.
Our Overview.
L.A. band The Americans perform original rock & roll and traditional American music. They’ve worked with Lucinda Williams, Nick Cave, and Courtney Love. Describing themselves as “original rock and roll with deep roots in traditional American music,” they started out as a out as a roots band enthralled by pre-war American country and blues, they have evolved into a blistering amalgamation of those influences, injected with a fiery blue collar rock ’n’ roll attitude, absorbing and reconfiguring the history of American music from Chuck Berry and Tom Waits to Bruce Springsteen. They named themselves after the controversial photo series by Robert Frank, which was first published in 1958 with a foreword by Jack Kerouac. Like Frank’s photos, The Americans’ songs are miniature biographies, intimate and empathic portraits of individuals that leave much unsaid.
The Americans were plucked from obscurity by Jack White, T Bone Burnett and Robert Redford to appear in the PBS documentary series “American Epic”. Burnett is quoted as saying, “The Americans are part of this group, these genius 21st century musicians, that are reinventing American heritage music for this century. And it sounds even better this century.” Over the years, however, they have shape-shifted into roots based rock and roll with a taste of rockabilly. Now and then, they transform back into devotees of deep American roots when they're so inclined.
“We always have a banjo, mandolin, and fiddles with us on tour,” frontman Patrick Ferris explains “Everyone in the band can play the banjo. And we still get a chance to do it every now and then, as we did in American Epic. … Those influences are sometimes overt, like when we put a banjo or a pump organ in a song, or the way Zac, Jake, and I fingerpick on electric guitar and bass. "
"There’s more to it than just the style of playing, or choice of instrument," he adds. "We’re more influenced by the emotional quality of old records -- those moments in old songs that we all love deeply -- than by the aesthetics or the instrumentation.”
“From the first rolling guitar notes, carrying sadness and defiance like dust, this sweeps me up: I want to know everything about where that feeling came from, and where it's going."Greil Marcus, Pitchfork.