AAG [All American Girl] – The Enemy

It’s a thing isn’t it, a début album? Do you make allowances on the basis that it’s their first try? I dunno, that seems disingenuous, condescending. Besides which, in this case it’s totally unnecessary.

With “The Enemy”, All American Girl are straight out of the traps with something that feels…what? Varied, imperfect at times, but right up there, fully fledged, a work of art and a thing of guts and beauty.

I first became aware of the band via a single track floating around the ether of a Facebook page dedicated to music so raw it’s still bleeding. In amongst piles of actually pretty good stuff from other artists, their track ‘Dark Was The Night’ truly stood out. A remarkable voice slinking like a snake over a hazy and yet nail-precise wash of sound, as though it had come out of the Paisley Underground. It was no surprise to find that singer Melissa Clarke Atwood was indeed from the US, but more disconcerting was the discovery that she now lives in one of those achingly hip London boroughs, and the rest of the band (David Bushell, Ben Glister and Daniel Metcalf) are from..ahem..Norwich.

The track embedded itself in my psyche, and I waited for what would come next, and to be honest, worried in case it might be a disappointment. Thank fuck it’s nothing of the sort, it fits around that original track with all sorts of poise. There’s less jag in the other tracks. Title track ‘The Enemy’ for instance feels as though you’ve just unwittingly got into the wrong car’s passenger seat at the gas station and find yourself driven into some dusty wide open landscape. The music playing on the eight-track is somehow brand new and familiar at the same time. While we’re talking about car stereos, the intro track struggles, being far too slow in the lead in, leaving me fiddling with the knobs when I should be driving, as it drips in. When it gets going, it’s lovely, a slowly growing haze seemingly played on ripe cornfields until the moment when the spirit of 70’s west coast American rock waves as it flies overhead in its private jet. That’s my obtuse way of saying the musicality of the band is impressive, mature way beyond their years of existence as a group. I’ve remarked on the jazz inflected drumming before, there really is anything in the mix from hints of free-form John McLaughlin through Byrds-ish moments to buzzed and fuzzed out shoegaze. There’s more shimmery guitar strum than I can normally stand, and yet somehow it remains un-hackneyed. All of what I’ve written is also hugely dependant on whether Melissa’s voice does it for you. It’s out there for sure, singular if not quite outré, and in a very very good way. I happen to love it.

To cut to the chase – right here, right now, in what’s been a fantastic twelve months, this album is right there at the top of my particular playlist, one of two or three records that I keep going back to, that can be relied on to to ‘do it’ for me when the rest of the world is just too much ‘meh’ for words. I really mean that, thanks guys.

The band are absolutely at that ‘brand new’ stage. The fate of the album has been thrown out there to the mercy of fan-funding, where it has in the last day or so, met its 100% target with 3 weeks left to go. Here’s the link if you want to grab a slice of the action right now – snooze and you’ll have to wait until the full record company release.

http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/aagallamericangirl utm_campaign=project7797&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pledgemusic –

[Rating:4]