"Several Shades of Green", the opener on Wreckless Eric’s amERICa, is flush with memories of "the hit parade," feckless backing musicians, and silly jackets recommended by magazine stylists. The music—a spare backbeat and bass guitar lollygag, busied by skittish piano runs and a modest choral section—belies the ragged, bemused delivery of an artist reflecting on his time as a journeyman power-pop artist on Stiff Records in the late 1970s. "If I’d known then, what I know now," goes the chorus—but it’s a tease. He stops and snickers at the temptation. That nimble maneuver—to reminisce, but jettison nostalgia—makes it a great opener for amERICa, an album rooted in classicist rock gestures but fixated on the contemporary United States.
Wreckless Eric, born Eric Goulden, wrote a lot of songs about the music industry. "Take the Cash (K.A.S.H.)", for instance, urged artists to get paid up front. And peers such as Nick Lowe memorably looked at the era’s intersection of fandom and commerce in songs such as "I Love My Label" and "Rollers Show", too. But Goulden’s return to the show business theme—which, perhaps because it seemed crass in the wake of punk, faded from rock lyricism forever and today thrives in rap—acknowledges the chasm of time between then and now. With distance, he gains lucidity.
It’s the same with the Englishman’s observations of the United States, which are dappled in telling detail and really rather astute. "White Bread", for instance, looks at the normalized delusions of a Middle America gun nut. On the rustic "Sysco Trucks", Goulden hovers over the wholesale food business: remote diners, kitchens, and markets all stocked with the same goods. There’s a critique implied, if not of capitalism at large then at least of monopoly and its subtly unsettling consequences for common cuisine. As he lightly notes, "Everything we’re eating comes from somewhere." The slaphappy typography "amERICa" is a bad indicator of Goulden’s tone; he’s mistily allusive, often playful, but never ham-fisted.
Wreckless Eric recorded amERICa at home in upstate New York. He played many of the instruments himself. The palm-muted guitars and roaring refrains of his old work remain, but the record is more reserved and instilled with zany, fanciful flourishes. Goulden rarely grasps for big, beaming hooks. Instead, reverse reverb and spectral keys temper his creaky, pliable voice. And that blurred, homespun atmosphere makes amERICa sound modern; it puts him in league with bedroom revivalists such as Home Blitz, who ply weirder, less commercially aspirant versions of Wreckless Eric’s classic power-pop sound.
Many artists of Wreckless Eric’s era and tradition have imitators, but few of yesteryear’s outliers can catch up with their descendants, let alone best them. amERICa is that rare record. Goulden is grownup, with all of the stereotypical benefits: an air of wisdom, emotional texture, and, perhaps most cliché of all, a seasoned voice. And yet, amERICa isn’t complacent or satisfied; Wreckless Eric anatomizes his surroundings with the wide-eyed thrill of discovery. His American flyover reveals simmering cultural disturbances and essential beauty alike—a late capitalist hellscape beneath "Bobbie Gentry’s Mississippi skies."
