Functional Music

Description

American Motors was established in 2023 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; not only to clear the drains, but to add that extra "post," to cleanse the lives of those spent chasing the punk, post-punk, and heck, shoegazing dreams of a generation dosed by the DIY ideals of indie rock. Guitarist and vocalist Dustin White and drummer Alex Steward, both have traveled Lewis and Clark paths towards a musical salvation that put them within the magma. Their CVs too voluminous to get into now, but rest assured, they're coast to coast post-rock journeymen who have spent just as much time rewiring the gear as they have screen-printing the 'zines, putting on house shows, and intently studying the lineage of those who came before. So, in turn, the touring and stageplay around the cycle for Content, was natural. Now with Functional Music, a record made with even more intention, with grander ideals and sonic vision.

Like the snarky conceptual riddle of Content, its sequel, Functional Music is the opposite of wallpaper - it's not music that sits complacent in the background. Songs like "No Horses" and "Margaritaville pt. 2" are steeped with inside jokes and harsh tones, but throughout, soaring bursts of shoegazing guitars (think Swervedriver, Slowdive, Moose) and minimalist atmosphere cut through the choking Pall Mall smoke. But is that smoke part of the atmosphere? The chug and grind of "5480 Big Tyler" (the title references a slum-lord cordoned apartment complex in White's native West Virginia) and "Marlboro Miles," still show the teeth of American Motors. The art of repetition and sonic blunt force trauma (think Shellac, the Birthday Party, Skin Graft Records). Touring member Andrew Krause provides the churling bass this time, and he's synchronized with the bummer vibes that define American Motors.

Again, given the title - Functional Music - that should also trigger the ethos of using the studio as an instrument. It's something White likely wouldn't argue, as he's often strategizing making art using a tech-inspired, gear-obsessed, head. Spare the nuances of latency and compression, or what may or may not have been used on Def Leppard's Hysteria b-sides being used here. Instead, in working with Jawbox's J. Robbins again at his Baltimore-based Magpie Cage, there's an existential contribution from the space in which this was created. Not only does Robbins know just exactly what to capture from American Motors, but the resinous spirituality of the studio, especially when it was OZ, is likely an intoxicating melange that informs the vibes, if not the music. Shudder to Think recorded there, Girls Against Boys, Brainiac, Velocity Girl, there's not a particular thread between those bands but somehow it all makes sense. It fits.

The band has hinted at the "New Hollywood" of the late '60s and '70s as a guide and inspiration for Functional Music. The vignettes of certain locales, snapshots of interior space where in those moments bad decisions are made and the mundane can be interpreted as profound and transformative. Peckinpah, Easy Rider, Bogdanovich. In that sense, you can see it as a neo-noir, blurred on a holler's horizon. Each song is a scene here, and if that metaphor is too heavy-handed, try it out in your head. Follow along. You can see the psychic on the phone who can't see the future, but only because it's obscured by a crumbling wall of breezeblock. So is it the future, or just the future home of a center of some sort? Data or dialysis, it's all the same. American Motors is what the teens doing inhalants behind the 7-11 are playing on a busted Realistic boombox. Believe it or not, they're the only ones who can actually see the future.

Recorded at the Magpie Cage in beautiful Baltimore, MD by J. Robbins

FFO/RIYL: Shellac, Fugazi, Swervedriver, Slowdive, Five Easy Pieces, Hysteria b-sides, pull-tabs, Roland S. Howard, Killing Joke, Charles Portis' Norwood.