With Adam Weiner racing up and down the keys like a man who just lit the piano on fire, Low Cut Connie has built a reputation more for high-octane rock and roll that verges on mayhem than for political commentary over the past fifteen years. On the band’s latest, Weiner poses a simple enough question: Why not both?
Livin in the USA is very much a protest album. “I made it because I am disgusted to see our country descend into an authoritarian hell / a moral vacuum / and a place where art does not lead the cultural conversation,” Weiner wrote in a poetically punctuated artist statement accompanying the LP. In the next breath, he says that Livin in the USA is also very much a party album, “because I refuse to let these motherfuckers steal our art and steal our joy.” So, that’s the premise animating ten songs that go hard, with a vibe like a sweaty summer night where everybody is out on the block, thrumming with a combination of adrenaline, joy, and defiance.
Weiner sets the tone right away with the title track, an amped-up take on the strings-and-piano version he released last year after becoming one of the first artists to cancel a gig at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. What started as a lament for a country Weiner no longer recognizes becomes a condemnation here, thanks to caustic overdriven guitars, a stomping beat and ringing backing vocals from Amanda “Rocky” Bullwinkel and Abigail Dempsey. The track feels almost like a warm-up for the pointed songs that follow.
Sometimes the songs tip more toward social commentary, and sometimes it’s more about shaking your ass. “Get Down” is the latter, with a hot groove fueling a combustible mix of guitars and piano while Bullwinkel augments Weiner’s rock and roll-shouter lead vocals with gritty harmonies through a distorted microphone. Later, Bullwinkel and Dempsey shine together again with deep-soul backing vocals on “Let Me Speak to Bobby,” where loud, taut guitars from Dempsey and Will Donnelly frame a tightly wound piano vamp. Weiner sings at his most soulful, and while he doesn’t specify which Bobby his message is for, there’s a cloudy-eyed goblin with family money and a taste for raw milk and eugenics who fits the description in the lyrics. “He’s got no soul,” Weiner moans. “I wanna let him know.”
If Weiner is focused on “getting naked in the afternoon” with his sweetheart on “Can’t Be Wrong,” an old-school rocker with stinging saxophone breaks, and getting the kinkiest haircut of all time on the rollicking uptempo boogie “Oh Yeah,” he’s locked into the political struggle elsewhere. “Not My Problem” pairs lacerating lyrics about deteriorating conditions with barrelhouse piano, a galloping drum beat, and woah-oh backing vocals. To close the album, the surging “Palpitations” is at once an acknowledgment that things aren’t normal and an attempt to make the best of it without giving in.
“Just because the world is collapsing doesn’t mean we can’t go skinnydipping this weekend,” Weiner writes in the artist statement. That’s the crux of Livin in the USA, an album that takes the position that resistance is essential, and resistance with a beat you can dance to is that much sweeter. Based on the delirious hedonism of Low Cut Connie’s previous work, you get the sense that pushing back against authoritarianism in the defense of art, soul, and rock and roll is a fight that Weiner would rather not have to have—and also that he and Low Cut Connie have no intention of backing down from it. [Contender]
Eric R. Danton has been contributing to Paste since 2013. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and Pitchfork, among other publications. He writes Freak Scene, a newsletter about music in Western Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Watch Low Cut Connie’s Paste Session below.
