You probably thought you’d never hear VietNam again. The surrealist trad-rockers were last active back in the mid-2000s, when they generated a decent amount of buzz based on one EP (2004’s The Concrete’s Always Grayer on the Other Side of the Street) and a self-titled full-length released in 2007 featuring guest vocals from Jenny Lewis and production by Beachwood Sparks’ Dave Scher and (weirdly) Mickey Madden of Maroon 5. After that, VietNam just sort of faded away. Given how VietNam didn’t exactly set the world on fire commercially, it seemed safe to assume that these guys shaved off their beards and took office jobs somewhere.
But, alas, head ’Nammer Michael Gerner kept the faith, and after several years of focusing his creative energy on film soundtracks and his solo project DA, he has assembled a new version of VietNam and recorded the band’s first album in six years, An A.merican D.ream. The passage of time did nothing to dilute Gerner’s ambition: Just as VietNam was a sprawling mess of stoner poetry and extemporaneous jams, An A.merican D.ream is a record thoroughly enamored with the thrilling possibilities and tired clichés of classic rock. For Gerner, each song is an opportunity to make a mind-blowing, motherfucking statement-- he pushes, stretches, elongates, and expounds every lyric and musical element, adding a couple of minutes of ambient noise to the bloat for good measure. Gerner’s best musical asset is unquestionably his conviction, as he speaks and performs utter bullshit with the fervor of a true believer. With his penchant for wordplay and the druggy, let-it-all-hang-out formlessness of Neil Young’s early 70s albums, he has the attitude and tastes of a great singer-songwriter. What he doesn’t have are the songs.
Vietnam are not exactly understated or ideologically sophisticated. Gerner last checked out during the final throes of the Bush administration, and now that he’s back he’s not about to let the intervening years go without a chin-stroke-y remark or several. The one-minute piano dirge “1.20.09” memorializes Obama’s first inauguration by cursing out corporations picking through the “bones of human rights.” On the spacey “Blasphemy Blues”, Gerner plays a “dirty little devil” with a pitchfork and a “tail in my pocket” (we’re talking here about a literal devil, because of course) spying evil people lurking amid “mansions inside mansions inside mansions.” The campy would-be epic “W.orld W.ar W.orries” aspires to be “Desolation Row” and winds up somewhere closer to “Eve of Destruction”-- Gerner blares pseudo-profound gibberish (“I kill my wife/ I kill my brother/ For this trick/ Why do I bother”) for more than three minutes before anything resembling a song materializes, and then prattles on for several more minutes about post-modern confusion. “We’re all goin’ crazy from these visions in our heads,” he sings. Totally, dude. Totally.
As silly as the songs on an A.merican D.ream are, it is Gerner’s wincingly theatrical vocals that really take the album into the realm of unintentional comedy. The "self-serious hippie" archetype is easy to make fun of, though Gerner’s passionate commitment to the material makes Vietnam oddly compelling. The amount of hyperbolic earnestness on display is bracing and, frankly, kind of refreshing given how aloofness is the default posture for so many indie bros these days. An American Dream was made by a guy drunk on delusions of grandeur-- even if Gerner whiffs more often than not, at least he’s swinging for the fences.
