American Aquarium will release its 8th studio album, “Lamentations“, produced by Shooter Jennings, on May 1st, via New West Records. The last album of the band, the awesome “Things Change“, had been released 2 years ago.
Till this date, American Aquarium released three songs that will be part of this album, “The Long Haul“, on March 5th, “The Luckier You Get“, on March 19th and “Me + Mine (lamentations)” on April 2d. All of them are amazing tunes, and the last one is particularly outstanding, for its impressive musical quality, its songwriting and its fantastic music video. I have no doubt that there’s a before and an after “Me+Mine” release, this 2020, in the area of country music genre.
I don’t usually write a lot of song reviews here, on this blog, as I prefer to write album or EP reviews. But after listening to this masterpiece, I knew I had to make an exception. We will listen to this entire album soon, but I’ve no doubt that “Me + Mine” is the core of it.
During 7 minutes, BJ Barham gives voice to the silent blue collar workers and put into words, better than ever, the despair of those who lost their job and their lack of confidence towards politicians, whoever they are. With such lyrics as “Politician shows up promising that he’ll return the jobs that God himself cannot bring back“, “The harder we work, the more they take“, or “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. That’s the day I gave up the American dream“, the high-strung artist brilliantly portrays, with emotion and incisive words, the reality of small towns that lost their factory and of people who lost their job and struggle for their family.
Musically, we have a preponderance of guitar during 4 or 5 minutes, and then a combination of several instruments, whose quality and energy give to the song and the lyrics even more intensity and power.
In the beautiful music video that you can check out below, you have BJ Barham sitting on an armchair with his guitar, along with poignant pictures of deserted factories and desolate buildings. During the last 2 minutes, you have a wonderful profusion of footage such as rockets, destruction of a factory, dying honeybees and even Brutus stabbing Caesar.
The song and its music video are really impressive, and we just can’t wait for the album. After an amazing “Things Change“, one of the best records of 2018 (it was #4 in Country Music France’s Top 2018 albums), it seems that, as the old wines do, American Aquarium makes better year after year and that “Lamentations” will be a major album of 2020.
Nicolas Davelu
Country Music France 