Amid the rampant distrust, dissatisfaction, and dissent in the United States during these times is the re-release by Three One G of Adam Gnade & The Hot Earth All-Stars’ AMERICANS, which seems not only particularly apt, but necessary. Here we see fractured lives in the form of three separate storylines– a companion to Gnade’s novel, Caveworld. Six songs are teeming with doubt (“we have kids/ but do our kids have us?”), depression (“are your friends dragging you down/ or were you down to begin with?”), isolation (“but what do you do when none of them speak for you?”). In the Southern Gothic dilapidated landscape, though, there is also hidden hope, self-salvation, kinship. “There’s no meaning of life, but there is meaning in life,” Gnade murmurs. It’s there among the somber blues, the windswept melancholy and yowling guitars, the ill-lit two-bit town imagery– you’ve only got to keep your ears to the hot earth.
Track listing:
1. Hello America
2. The Whole Lonesome Thing
3. The Ballad of Tom Bluefeather
4. You Got Mean
5. Supper’s Waiting on the Table
6. This is the End of Something (But It’s Not the End of You)