With fluid checks, brooms and beeps, on Elegant Automobile, the second song from American Cream Band’s latest release, Twin, Nathan Nelson and Liz Buhmann ask the question, “Let’s see how fast this thing can go?”
The answer is far. The Saint Paul, Minnesota duo, backed by a Springsteen-like array of musicians, lead the way for a journey where the is destination unknown. Twin doesn’t transcend countries and continents: it’s a bridge that connects them all.
Executed in simple but effective ways, Nelson and Buhmann are joined by Alex Meffert (saxophone), Andy Rockwood (guitars), Jesse Kwakenat (bass), Birdy (keys), Alex Achen (percussion, processed vocals), Mat Heinrich (drums), Adam Patterson (percussion, piano), multi-instrumentalist, Joe Berns, and group vocalists, Ivy W.W, Becca Andersen and Marissa Galan. This manifestation of the band, drawing from all corners of the world to create the kind of flavoursome sounds that are the backdrop to the summer.
Thematically, Twin sees Nelson and Buhmann part with deceptively clever wordplay. It’s smart because it’s not from the ivory towers of academia, but from the street level. They don’t talk down to their audience, because they are right beside them fighting the same fight. Ethical Vampire, funky democratic dance-punk that many would claim to be radical. However, it’s more common sense thinking than anything else. (The term radical, overused these days, and in truth, the only effective thing it does is scare the horses.)
American Cream Band - TwinThe political undercurrents continue on Don’t Burn the House Down where Nelson and Buhmann untangle the complexities with succinctness. Why use 30 words when 10 will get the point across? Sonically, it’s baggy without the blokey, swagger bullshit that has drowned the genre for all these years.
Elsewhere, Birthday and We’re Not So Sinister sees American Cream Band celebrate collectivism in modest ways. (“Pick me up / Don’t put me down” – the former; “Can’t stand to be alone / Fear keeps you on the phone” – the latter.) It’s looking out for each other in the face of the adversity so many are faced with each day. But unlike many, American Cream Band don’t preach it. Instead, they portray it in the get-to-know-your-neighbour kind of way that Broken Social Scene mastered in the ’00s.
In the lead-up to Twin’s release, the band spoke of duality, and sonically, there are subtle contrasts. No Funeral Necessary, brimming with atmospheres that are like a gentle breeze cutting through the summer heat, while Ms. Masterless is a tempered free-rock collage with lyrical vignette that sparkle (“These blues won’t lose”). The band dials it down even further on Leda and the Swan. Meffert’s gentle saxophone, the vital ingredient to a sound bath laced either LSD.
From opening track, The Hive Is Pissed, to the last note of We’re Not So Sinister, Twin is illuminating. Pysch-laden new-wave with instrumentation tracked to the sky, it all melts into a kind of formula that could well be future proof. Pitting playful instrumentation against serious themes, American Cream Band deliver a new form of message music. And it’s the kind that stays with you.
Twin is out now via Quindi Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.
