The United States of America - The United States of America (1968)

I'm feeling a bit saucy today so I'll begin with a contentious declaration--The United States of America's self-titled 1968 debut (and sole album) is the best American psychedelic album of the 1960's.  As usual, such things are firmly a matter of taste, but for me this band and album exemplify the psychedelic movement sonically and ideologically in a way that many British (but pathetically few American) bands could successfully accomplish.  Although there are numerous great US albums with psychedelic elements (Blonde on Blonde and Forever Changes, for example), this one positively oozes psychedelia from its overt LSD references, mad sound excursions and defiantly interrogative attitude.

For me, the band's interest 20th century classical music (the members were bigtime John Cage devotees, apparently) perfectly marries with the (at the time) chic psychedelic aesthetic--after all, most of the recording techniques, early synthesizers and theoretical precepts of the psychedelic era had already worked themselves through the more arcane and intellectual world of "classical" music starting around fifty years earlier.  The polytonal album-opening collage of carnival organ music, marching band and piano fades into the hazy "The American Metaphysical Circus," featuring Dorothy Moskowitz's ring modulator-treated vocals over an increasingly heavy drum-and-bass dirge with an ample cacophonous backdrop of early synthesizer blurps and effect-laden violin.  Dissonance abounds, and it's impossible to deny your in for a real trip as Moskowitz's vocals get steelier and steelier.  The lyrics first broach the dominant themes of the album (and band--their name is no accident), creepily allegorizing the cheap facade of post WWII consumerist, suburban America as a sort of nightmarish bordello in which "the price is right/the cost of one admission is your mind." 

Let's not jump to the conclusion that this is all clinical academic music theory, though.  "Hard Coming Love" immediately follows with an uptempo blast hard pop, with a mouth-wateringly noisy and overdriven violin solo--the vocals don't even come in until 1:30.  It's the clear aim of the band not to supplant the form of pop music but to warp such undeniably catchy tunes with trippy atonality and downright weird sounds (check out the twittering synth interludes after each chorus).  "The Garden of Earthly Delights" and "Coming Down" are similarly rocking-yet-hooky with some pretty out-there lyrics, with the latter pretty clearly pondering an acid comedown.  The false sheen of suburban conformity is again sent-up in the hilarious dixieland jazz of "I Won't Leave My Wooden Wife for You, Sugar" and the melancholic "Stranded in Time"(both sung by the band's leader, Joseph Byrd) while the capitalist system's seedy underbelly is further considered by "The American Way of Love," a mighty album closing suite that variously mocks "respectable" white businessmen, perverts surf pop and pastiches another sound collage culled from the preceding tracks in one final mind-expanding resolution.  What really impresses me is the astute compositional variety on display here--in addition to marches, ballads, rock, jazz, pop, and chamber music arrangements, we get a sinisterly anthemic meditation on the irretrievability and inscrutability of the past set to a warped blend of Gregorian chant and rock ("Where Is Yesterday").

Despite the musicians' clear musical erudition, they manage to walk a fine line of challenging accessibility, never letting us forget that they're having a hell of a good time doing it--Moskowitz has a great voice that is strangely sexy despite some of the lyrical content, and Byrd's voice makes up for its mere technical passability with plenty of sneering ironic attitude.  The heavy drums and fuzz bass are serious draws, with some of the sickest basslines I've heard in any genre, while the electronics are probably the best-integrated synths of the late 60's on tape, often functioning compositionally rather than just as a strange noisy backdrop (as in Fifty Foot Hose's Cauldron, for example).  And, oh yeah, there's no guitar (please accept my apologies for not beginning my review with this fact--it's amazing how nervous and apologetic critics get when the trusty six-string is nowhere to be heard)!  This is one of those few guitarless instances where I truly don't miss it; it's more than replaced by the aggressive violin and agile bass playing. 

Unfortunately the sound quality isn't the greatest--the details of the cacophony get steamrolled by treble-heavy speakers--I often forget how good this album is since there are situations in which I just can't play it, but whenever I catch up with it on good headphones or a nice system I wish it was more conducive to all listening settings.  I should also add that the liner notes for the CD remaster are great--illuminating interviews with both Byrd and Moskowitz on the band's fascinating history and artistic principles.  I won't lie--this album sounds very much of its time, probably sounding to some like a throwback time capsule--but it's got that stylish 60's atmosphere (the female vocals help) that will always be classy to my ears.  Strange how that mood all but disappeared from the early 70's on.  There are more popular American psychedelic albums (how so many West coast bands re-regurgitated the same bland "psychedelic" blues jams ad nauseum and became touted as the best psychedelic music the country produced is beyond me), but none are as intelligent, satirical and vividly crazy as this, the thinking man's American psychedelic album.

Get it here on CD, or MP3, or vinyl reissue.