Rostam, the ever-productive alt-pop producer, has given his third solo album the title American Stories. The cover art is a faded, upside-down American flag, with Rostam’s name rendered, as it was on the covers of his past two albums, in Arabic script. The literal inversion of the flag suggests a figurative inversion of expectations, and two minutes into the countryish opening track, “Like a Spark,” we get our first surprise. The song begins with the kind of bluegrass noodling often found on Grateful Dead songs, and it’s coated in the kind of hopeful sheen that seems to emanate automatically from people born in America in the 1980s. The chorus is a declaration of someone else’s independence: “Everybody wants you tied down easily, except for me/I only ever wanted you to feel freed of it,” Rostam sings, the melody tumbling gently downward, the “it” in question left open-ended. And just when you think the song is yet another boxcar hitched to the current alt-country train, in comes the electric saz, bursting with energy but still blending seamlessly into the composition.
The use of warm tone, maximalist instrumentation, and intercultural fusion might not sound like a notable reach outside of Rostam Batmanglij’s musical comfort zone. But American Stories still feels at least a little bit different. As the press release declares, it’s the first album where he “fully explor[es] his Persian roots.” Technically this isn’t the first time he’s mixed Iranian and American music—he did so with his score for the 2023 comedy film The Persian Version, and on a podcast interview about that score, he mentioned the Persian influences on Vampire Weekend songs like “Worship You” and “Young Lion”; what’s different here appears to be the favoring of Persian music to the exclusion of all other cross-cultural inspirations. It’s also a notable change from his usual approach to production; both 2017’s Half-Light and 2021’s Changephobia were discursive experiments in vibey indie pop, with vocals mumbled like the early morning recap of a half-remembered dream, synths smeared like oil paint, and drums echoing as if played in a subway tunnel. American Stories has an unusual quality for Rostam’s work, another inversion of expectations: clarity.
The production here feels crisper and more immediate than on past creations. The twangy “Back of a Truck” has an uncanny brightness, and the strings that kick off “Hardy” (a sample of a performance of the score to Truffaut’s 1973 film Day for Night) are vibrant to the point of mania. Rostam’s vocals are fairly prominent and unadorned in the mix, a shake-up from the usual obscurity he favors. This is also probably Rostam’s most compact and thematically cohesive project, with almost all of the nine tracks on the 30-minute album leaning toward folk and Americana. After the explosive energy of the first two tracks, things calm way down. “Different Light,” built on a gentle shuffle of brushed snares, closes with a sweet intermingling of piano and pedal steel; “The Road to Death,” a very damn-I’m-in-my-40s-now rumination on mortality (“All of us are at the doctor’s office/And some of us are staying after”), sounds like something you’d put on at last call at the roadhouse when you’re trying to kick everyone out for the night.
The Persian instrumentation pops against such a lowkey backdrop. Amir Yaghmai of the Voidz plays the acoustic and electric saz throughout, letting it dance over the straightforward folk chords, and it’s a highlight of the album—on “Forgive Is to Know,” it melds beautifully with a violin part played by Paul Cartwright, adding a bold flourish to the meditative mood. And on “Back of a Truck,” the saz fits right into the country scenery, trading off licks with the electric guitar after Rostam describes listening to a Bob Dylan cassette while driving down I-94. In the press release, Rostam said that this blend of cultures provided the theme of American Stories: “Pushing the most Iranian elements right up against the most American ones brought me a certain kind of joy.” As the United States has escalated its attacks on Iran, there’s something pleasingly transgressive about bringing Iranian elements into such overtly Western music—so much so that the songs without Yaghmai’s playing seem a little subdued in comparison.
The concept of “American stories” feels explicit in the music, maybe less so in the lyrics. Historically, Rostam solo albums are full of pensive and personal moments—reflections on life while taking long walks, weighing conflicted emotions while lounging in bed—and this one is no exception. There’s a lot of sometimes at play: on “Back of a Truck,” sometimes he wakes up happy, and sometimes he’s “sad as hell”; on “Different Light,” “sometimes all the words come quick,” but “sometimes it may take a while.” It often feels like you’re catching Rostam smack-dab in the middle of the world’s most chill introspection session—questions about big topics like death and forgiveness and artistic inspiration are all on the table, but nothing feels so urgent that it needs an immediate answer.
On “Hardy,” perhaps the most traditionally Rostam-sounding song in the bunch, the arrangement—that dizzying orchestral sample, punchy drums, a spectral guest verse from Clairo—is daring, but the words have a pliability to them: “Maybe the greatest art is never completed/We only have to leave it knowing we tried.” Makes sense, given he told The Guardian he started writing that song in 2012 and only now committed it to tape. Rostam seems to understand that his musical decisions have an assurance that his lyrics might lack; at the beginning of “Forgive Is to Know,” he sings, “The chords are set in stone but/The words I’m working on.”
Other than a mention of Batmanglij’s father on “The Road to Death” (“My father carries the name of a prophet/But Dad was no believer”), the imagery feels broad and universal: morning light, highway drives, biking in the city. What’s on Rostam’s mind comes into clearest focus on the last two tracks: The first, “Come Apart,” calmly assesses the bleak state of the world, alluding to the Palestinian genocide with an image of burning olive trees. The second, “The Weight,” celebrates the young people who speak out against such atrocities. (Rostam seems particularly attuned to student protesters like the ones who participated in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment a couple years ago; 51% of proceeds from his release of an ” version of Vampire Weekend’s “Campus,” which he first recorded in his Columbia University dorm, go to relief funds for Palestine and Sudan.) “They can force a resignation/But can’t stop a formation,” he sings, a stomping beat animating the simple piano chords. “You got courage on your side.” The song closes with a coda of saz and mandolin, mournful and hopeful in equal measure. “The Weight” feels like a holistic artistic statement for Rostam—not just its impeccable composition and warmth, but its clear message of dissent and encouragement. Earlier on the record, Rostam made space for ambiguity: “Sometimes the words mean what you like.” But here, you know exactly what he wants to say.
