Album review: Hard Working Americans, Hard Working Americans

Post-Springsteen, working class dignity is in the air and in the US they have the same political shorthand we endure about "hard-working families" when any Leftist politician steps up for a soundbite. This semi-supergroup - best known are guitarist Neal Casal (Ryan Adams' bands) and singer-songwriter Todd Snyder who helms this - picks up songs about struggling blue-collar US families from street-poet Hayes Carll, Randy Newman (Mr President Have Pity on the Working Man), Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings (Wrecking Ball) and others. It's an uncompromisingly sympathetic view of life on the bottom of the fiscal totem pole. In an industrialised society an escape to ruralism - The Mountain Song by Kieran Kane - might seem naive, but Snyder's broken delivery and Casals' elevating Byrdsian/Tom Verlaine solo are persuasive. But the factory-closure, minimum wage and unemployment cheque barroom anger (Stomp and Holler) is equally convincing. This is how thoughtful Americans articulate socio-political disillusionment in song. So, who's doing this here? Are things so good we're as "relaxed" as our betters? Doubt it. Ain't it always the rich what gets the pleasure, and the poor what gets the blame?

Verdict:

A blue-collar worldview from America

- TimeOut / elsewhere.co.nz