Premiere: Strays – The Americans (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

It would be too easy to label The Americans a country band and leave it at that. It’s the sort of thing we lazy journalists are known to do. But to do so would be doing the band a great disservice, for not only is country a broad genre, almost to the point of being meaningless as a label, but The Americans is a band that calls on all manner of other sounds and styles and who masterfully weave nuanced tones and textures through their songs, that we need to take a much closer look than that.

Strays is a short, sharp and shockingly good set of songs, five in all, but five is all that the band need to convince the listener that they are a band to keep a close eye on (should that be ear on?) a band that might have one foot in the broad country camp but then uses the other to waltz and weave, dab and dance through any other sonic pastures that take its fancy.

If the opener, When You Get Back, is country, then it is country that is anthemic, dynamic, and soaring – running from lulling lows to sky-searing crescendos, from spaciousness to reassuring weight. Land of The Free is a new and honest, perhaps even subversive take, on the American Dream, coming from the same sort of place that the likes of Springsteen or Steve Earle write about the darker underbelly of American society and built out of strands of indie-folk and understated Americana.

William (For Leadbelly) again highlights their ability to travel along slow-burning musical pathways, ebbing and flowing between melody and muscle, wrapping plenty of additional sonic weight around them as they go, switching between mood and dynamic, blending power and poignancy.

Showing that they can write songs that are deft and delicate as readily as they can, those of a more direct and impactful nature, I Belong To You is that rare thing, a love song that avoids the cliches and states its case in a brilliantly honest and relatable way. Kingdom is the big finish, again a song that starts in an unimposing and restrained way but which travels through big dynamic changes and powerful musical passages on its way to its final destination. A song which sums up the band’s musical prowess, which incorporates the signature sounds of everything that makes the band so great and is the perfect way to put the album to bed.

I must confess that The Americans is a new musical ping on the sonic radar for me, but with two full-length albums already to their name, I know what I will be listening to for the rest of the day.