Part love-letter to America, part critique of it, America sees former Howling Bells frontwoman Juanita Stein craft a delight which wouldn’t sound out of place pouring from a small-town 1950s diner’s wireless radio.

Country and western influences come through from the first twangs of the guitar in opening track ‘Florence’. Its tense harmonies and dry distortion immediately conjure images of dramatic stand-offs among the tumbleweed. The Florence it refers to is Florence Owens Thompson, the subject of Migrant Mother, one of the defining photographs of Great Depression-era America – you’d know it if you saw it. Lyrically, its subject is dustbowl-era poverty, motherhood, and aspiration.

It’s the first of several brooding songs which Stein calls “an ode to the dark heart of America”, stories which are all refreshingly told from a female perspective. The driving and sinister ‘Black Winds’, and the whimsical ‘Someone Else’s Dime’ both treat promises made but unfulfilled, dreams which are bought, only to be found insubstantial. Stein has said that, as a child in Australia, TV and film endlessly fed her idealised pictures of American life. While she’s not lacerating in her critique of it, it’s clear that the goal of this album is to examine in what ways the American dream, is just that.

Backing up lyrical content that largely focuses on the unattained and unfulfilled is an illusory sense which overlays the album. This sound is communicated with the vocal chorus effects used throughout, most obviously on the mock-suburban ‘I’ll Cry’; with the underwater-sounding guitar effects of ‘Stargazer’; and with the 60s-pop euphoria of ‘It’s All Wrong’ (my personal highlight). A couple of songs could have come straight from a collection of country and western music’s greatest crooners – by obviously tipping the hat to singers like Dusty Springfield and, to my ears, Dolly Parton, Stein not only broadens the range of the album, but encourages the dreamlike nostalgia that pervades its lyrics.

This all comes to a head in the closing track from which the album takes its name, ‘America’, which begins with the harp-trill so often used in film to signify the start of a dream-sequence. Lyrics like “Your message is dying fast” and “you lost your innocence somewhere along the winding road”, clearly signal the message that Stein’s been building throughout the album, and the conflicting feelings she has about the country.

One line from this closing song, “America, you’re close to paradise”, really crystallises the ambivalence this album holds. Yes, with stories of poverty and broken promises, Stein pulls apart the notion that America is a paradise, subverting the idea of the American dream. However, a deep love for American culture also shines through, as she pays tribute to its history, culture and music – give it a listen and it will transport you to the America that doesn’t quite exist, but that was shown on black and white television sets around the world.

Ben Noble

Website: juanitastein.com