During my college years in the mid-1980s, my main ride was a late-70s Chevrolet Chevette that sported good mpg, little pickup and an AM-only radio. That last fact led me, in time, to add an inexpensive cassette deck but, at the moment, I’m remembering those months when I twisted the dial through reams of static in search of something/anything I might like. The AM band in the Philly area was, to my ears, a wasteland of easy listening classics, big band music, and talk, talk, talk of one stripe or another.
A decade earlier, however, and the odds are good that I’d have found something worthwhile. WFIL (560) and WIBG (990) were Top 40-oriented AM stations, while WPEN (610) was, for part of the day, oldies central. WRCP (1540) played country music. I’m sure I’m missing a few and that’s okay; in some ways, it’s beside the point. I share all that to say this: Charlie Kaplan’s whimsical brand of pop-rock would have sounded like a godsend if it had flowed from the cheap speakers in my Chevette.
The album began life over a decade ago, not long after Kaplan graduated college, via a series of acoustic demos that he recorded on his phone. As a result, it’s somewhat of a conversation, with the optimism of his youthful self given voice by his more wearied adult self. As Kaplan explained in the album’s press release, it’s “an album about how growing up feels while you’re doing it; it’s like taking the train into the city knowing you’ll have to catch the last one out later.” It’s retrospective introspective, in a sense.
As a result, parts of the album dig into the difficulty of re-orienting one’s mindset from carefree college days to serious adult responsibilities. As he sings in “Rockaway,” “Because bars aren’t parties/And apartments aren’t dorms/And you’ve got to wake up early/Or your boss is gonna kill you.” Another highlight is his song for his wife, “Talking French”; he enjoys seeing her when she speaks French, her first language, and fantasizes about leaving the cat with his mother and flying off to her homeland. As cool is the jazz-like breakdown that pianist Winston Cook-Wilson recorded on the piano in Kaplan’s childhood home.
“Gas Station Bathroom” digs into the sense of being lost that sometimes follows the loss of a loved one. “She Will Stop at Nothing,” on the other hand, chronicles a relationship issue that stems mostly from his flaws (“I’m all smoke and mirrors, I admit”).
By far, however, my favorite song is the title track, which rings of truths louder than those spoken in its opening words: “I got clean from the bottle, bottoming out/I still don’t know what this song is about.” What follows explores the undertow that threatens to pull folks beneath the water’s surface. It’s akin to a Doug Yule cover of a catchy Greg Kihn tune.
All in all, Country Life in America is a strong set of songs that conveys moments and emotions that should be identifiable to all, and does so in a melodic manner. Give it a go.
The Old Grey Cat 