NEW ALBUM
AMERICANA
Album of the month
American Aquarium: in a field of their own
AMERICAN AQUARIUM
The Fear Of Standing Still
THIRTY TIGERS
7/10
Ruminative, hard-charging 10th from North Carolina sextet
A DECADE or so after the Jason Isbellproduced Burn. Flicker. Die, initially conceived as the rowdy resignation letter of a band in perpetual crisis, American Aquarium sound more vital than at any point in their career.
The Fear Of Standing Still is the kind of studio effort that aims to reflect the intensity of their live shows, an opportunity, as frontman and songwriter BJ Barham puts it, “to showcase how big and anthemic we can be”.
The Southern six-piece return to producer Shooter Jennings – overseer of 2020’s decent-selling Lamentations – to help render the noise. They start smartly enough, the whole band leaning into the cowpunk-ish “Crier”, guitarist Shane Boeker peeling off into a howling, heroic solo. The song finds a companion in bolshy closer “Head Down, Feet Moving”, a rallying hymn to forward motion, driven by the ultimate promise of a view worth waiting for. Yet much of The Fear Of Standing Still is more complex and nuanced than that. Barham is at that juncture in his life where nothing is absolute, his creativity shaped by memory and loss, and the unresolved tension between the pull of the road and home.
Conflicted notions of identity are explored on “Southern Roots”, for which he’s joined by Atlantan singer-songwriter Katie Pruitt: “There’s a reason I don’t come back here/Except a couple times a year/Where familiarity and fear intertwine”. It’s a song of good old boys, tangled family histories and, ultimately, taking responsibility. The latter also feeds into “Piece By Piece”, an affecting piano ballad in which Barham – now 10 years sober – looks back on his bleakest days and offers thanks for his deliverance: “Took my foot off the throttle/ Crawled out of the bottle/And started to rebuild”.