Within the fall of 1993, Bay Guardian arts editor Kevin Berger requested a dozen of us who had been writing about music in San Francisco to mirror on our favourite album of the previous 5 years. Souled American got here to thoughts. Partially I wrote 

Take Souled American’s Flubber.  If it was ambient, it was a gnarly, moldy atmosphere, hiccupping up Pabst at odd intervals. The pure fungus of it started to develop on me: it had a falling-down-the stairs, landing-on-it-feet sort of coherence. Deconstructed people music, a postmodern Music from Huge Pink with Studio One bass and Garth Hudson with nothing to play however a broken-down pump organ. Is that this how the music sounded earlier than it acquired pushed in entrance of a microphone? In all probability not. Straining, barely in-tune vocals, an errantly plucked mandolin riff, the reverberated antithesis of an influence chord.  Misplaced soul music.

Apart from the deadpan pleasure and unpredictable creakiness of all of it, what has most likely stored me listening is that I simply don’t have the slightest thought what they’re singing about. Do I care? There have all the time been loads of straightforward solutions floating round in pop music (see “hook”). Flubber sounds prefer it’s having a tough time posing a query. I can respect that sort of confusion.

I didn’t go on the lookout for Souled American. They discovered me. Fell into my arms in a room on the Crest Resort in Austin in 1990. A buddy of a buddy who labored for Tough Commerce whereas there was nonetheless a Tough Commerce to work for was handing out cassettes of Tough Commerce artists. I assume all of the hip stuff had been scooped up as a result of all that was left was Flubber (1989) and Across the Horn (1990), Souled American’s second and third information. I’d a minute-long dialog with the band’s drummer Jamey Barnard the night time earlier than, in entrance of a membership the place they’d simply opened for Cowboy Mouth—which from this distance appears the oil and water mixture of all time.  

Perhaps I performed one of many tapes on the drive again to New Orleans. Bizarre stuff. Bent tones from all instructions, the vocals wavering and warbling, the electrical guitars deeply reverberant. The bass was incessantly pushed to the entrance of the combo and gave the impression to be continuously trying to find the “right” observe whereas taking apparent pleasure in not fairly arriving there. 

You couldn’t say the songs on Flubber and Across the Horn had been organized. Their group and ahead movement appeared extra random than aware. The sluggish stuff—properly—it was actually sluggish. My solely body of reference on the time for one thing shifting at this sort of glacial fee was Nick Lowe’s “Limitless Sleep”. That was a goof, proper? 

If these guys had been goofing on us, their supply was exceedingly dry. They simply appeared to love enjoying actually, actually slowly, in a manner that slowed down simply the way you listened to them. How was I to know: Souled American was simply starting to get actually sluggish? That these had been their pop albums?  

Souled American’s story is actually an American one. Keep in mind Lee Audrey “Velocity” Riggs’ outdated advert for Fortunate Strike cigarettes, all jive-talkin’ auctioneer rap, then his clarion conclusion, “Bought American!” After all not—you’re not 90 years outdated. Then how about Kinky Friedman and Billy Joe Shaver’s “Bought American” from 1973? “Writing down your memoirs/on some window within the frost.” Memos from the misplaced freeway.

It’s the American story of shifting, by matches and spurts, to a considerably mysterious conclusion: “No”. Like Melville’s Bartleby. “I’d choose not”. Like Thoreau in his lonesome shack within the shade. Like Lew Welch—”I went Southwest” (not). 

Certainly, Souled American’s profession arc mirrored Herman Melville’s. Nearly fashionable, an adventurous debut, then diminishing business returns and lowering visibility with every succeeding launch.  Then, silence. Souled American information since 1996: zero. Had been principals Chris Grigoroff and Joe Adducci toiling within the Midwestern equal of a customs home? Composing their Billy Budd by a corn nation Walden? Wandering the Sierra foothills with a handgun, turkey buzzards circling? There was no option to inform. 

In an age when all the pieces you’ve ever wished to know and far you don’t may be discovered with a half-diligent Google search, Souled American had left barely a mirage, a skinny whisp of smoke. A minimize on a Kristofferson tribute. No gigs for 25 years, aside from just a few alleged appearances in tiny hamlets deep within the Rockies. No option to buy their catalog with out paying somebody in Finland to ship a 100-euro CD to you.

Souled American Re-Emerges from Its Pale Previous

souled american omnivore inssouled american omnivore ins
Picture Courtesy of Omnivore Recordings

Till now, some 29 years after their final LP, Omnivore Information has launched Rise Above It: A Souled American Anthology, a group drawing 20 songs from their six extant albums. It’s a lengthy overdue re-introduction to a singular sound and aesthetic.

Rise Above It traces Souled American’s work chronologically. It’s a useful strategy to understanding the band’s uncommon evolution and a research in resonance, echo, and disintegration. Key options of the band had been seen from the very begin—Grigoroff’s plaintive vocals, Adducci’s elastic bass as lead instrument, a refrain that sounds drawn from form observe singing.

Whereas the band peaked commercially with modest gross sales of a primary album and slid slowly towards invisibility, in a market sense, that is no extra helpful a lens into Souled American’s development than mentioning that Melville’s Typee bought extra copies than Moby Dick. Three and a half a long time of listening to Souled American has left me much less confused than I used to be by Flubber in 1993 and extra in awe of their achievement. Rise Above It is a wonder-inducing, head-scratching consolidation of that achievement.

Souled American was shaped in 1986 across the nucleus of guitarist-singer-songwriter Grigoroff and bassist-singer-songwriter Adducci. Grigoroff and Adducci grew up in downstate Illinois, and after a stint in a school city reggae band, joined in Chicago with guitarist Scott Tuma and drummer Jamey Barnard. 

From the start, the band mixed eclectic influences. Grigoroff had come up enjoying harmonica in outdated time string band music, Adducci’s mom was a rustic songwriter. Barnard had a propensity for a type of upside-down beat that’s tough for anybody not native to Kingston or southern Louisiana to grasp. Tuma was new to the Fender Telecaster and guitars basically, which proved its personal essential ingredient. He hardly ever performed something resembling lead guitar however provided indelible and generally disorienting colour to all the pieces he touched.  

After more and more profitable Chicago-area gigs in 1987, a demo satisfied Robin Hurley of Tough Commerce US to make Lucinda Williams and Souled American the UK label’s first American signings. Three Souled American albums adopted in the middle of 18 months: Fe (1988), Flubber (1989), and Across the Horn (1990). Following the 1992 launch of Sonny, the band’s ultimate file for Tough Commerce, Jamey Barnard left the band. 

Frozen was launched in 1994 on the German label Moll Tontrager, which in 1996 additionally launched the band’s ultimate new album to this point, Notes Campfire, by which era the band had stripped down largely to Grigoroff and Adducci alone. Souled American’s journey started in one thing (virtually) resembling the prototype of a standard alt-country rock band. By the point of the discharge of Frozen, they’d turn into a type of ambient, musique concrete tackle Americana. 

In 1997, flummoxed by Souled American’s lack of recognition, author Camden Pleasure and Mark Lerner of the Rag and Bone Store collaborated on 50 Posters about Souled American. These had been literal posters plastered about Manhattan by Pleasure, Lerner, and compatriots from Lerner’s band Flat Outdated World. These posters extolled the virtues and qualities of Souled American’s music and ghost presence on this planet at massive. The posters got here to a complete of 64 ultimately, and though 11 writers contributed textual content, Pleasure (aka Tom Adelman) scripted roughly 80%.  

The primary poster within the collection states that Souled American’s songs “[s]eem to be about fragmentation”.  True. Nevertheless, as well as, the songs themselves embody fragmentation. They’re actually fragmented, jerking ahead once they appear to have stopped, notes showing as singular, remoted, and dissonant sounds, half-time, half-finished arpeggios punctuating and ending half-stated lyrics and which means. It will probably take minutes for a music to fade out, the aural equal of watching an ox-drawn wagon disappear within the distance over a horizon on very flat land.  

Souled American’s music virtually all the time proceeds at a strolling tempo. Whereas their earlier work generally approximated a forward-leaning amble—albeit at an eccentric gait–by Frozen issues had been all the way down to a plodding stagger, with ahead movement solely one among a number of choices. OK—I get it—this doesn’t sound actual interesting. Perhaps that is one cause why listenership appeared to fall off as their catalog elevated. 

Bear with me. By sluggish, I don’t imply to counsel that the music is boring or that the expertise of listening is like watching paint dry. By no means. Souled American’s tempo is halting at occasions, however its intentions are fairly intentional and fairly mysterious.

Souled American has been described instead nation band, and there’s some fact to that assertion. Their melodies are clearly American plainsong people, and so they surfaced simply as Americana was poking by way of the soil within the guise of outfits like Uncle Tupelo and Whiskeytown. As Zach Schonfeld asserted in 2008, “there’s little commercially viable in regards to the band’s model of torpid nation.” 

John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats has described the band as embodying “an virtually cosmic disappointment.” The precise attraction of Souled American appears to stump a few of its most ardent followers. Theodore McDermott revealed a brief piece on the band in The Believer in 2008, by which he admitted to having decreased his operational music library to Souled American. McDermott states”

I don’t imply that I’ve listened to them usually or lots. I imply this: after I take heed to music, I take heed to Souled American. I imply that I spend a number of hours per day listening, again and again, to those albums.

And the factor is, I’m not even certain I like them.  

At one level on Frozen, Grigoroff drawls this sentiment: “I’m feeling so fortunate/ to be feeling/ mis’rable” (“Fortunate”). What to do with a refrain and hook like that? 

Lower free from Tough Commerce, a launch on a tiny German label, recording in a buddy’s basement, Frozen appears a second when the band doubles down on its native and pure contrariness. Six of Frozen’s music titles are comprised of a single phrase. They’re extra about states of being than narrative songcraft, although bits and items of narrative leak out across the edges. By Frozen, Souled American’s guitars appear to supply notes mainly to listen to then decay within the considerable and surrounding silence and area. 

Lead vocals are shared equally between Grigoroff and Adduci throughout Frozen’s tracks. Hardly ever do the 2 sing collectively or present concord for one another, a departure from Souled American’s earliest work. When their voices do come collectively, it looks like an natural affirmation of a stifled however nonetheless vibrant life power. 

Adducci’s mom, Vicki, contributes one music to Frozen, as had turn into regular on Souled American recordings, and “Sitdown”—right here co-written with Joe Adducci – is essentially the most easy tune on the file. Nonetheless, the singer means that he must “sit down/and provides my phrases/a very good speaking to.” Not precisely nation high 40 fodder.  

“Heyday”, one among two tracks from Frozen included on Rise Above It, might, as its lyrics attest, be about “a day/after I shout hey”, or about Adducci’s allergy assaults. As the ultimate music on Frozen, strummed on unprocessed acoustic guitars in a simple method, even a bit upbeat in tempo (OK—comparatively upbeat), “Heyday” comes throughout as tongue-in-cheek, inscrutable, hopeful, and elegiac suddenly.  It concludes”

Obtained to be the toughest factor/to stay down/one of the best days of your life
To put down/one of the best performs of your life

Frozen is evocative of one thing very Midwestern and agrarian. “It’s exhausting sufficient/to plow/a frozen discipline”, Frozen begins. Souled American is making an attempt (in all senses). Like some nation folks, they don’t wish to look too instantly in your face whereas they’re speaking to you or allow you to see them sweat. It’s music that may appear to be straightforward to untangle, given its tempo and spare preparations, however the impact is simply the other.

Rise Above It collects roughly a 3rd of the songs Souled American launched between 1988 and 1996 on their six albums. The uncommon rumors leaked from the Souled American camp (wherever that’s?) insinuate they’re engaged on a seventh album. “Sorry State”, a Souled American tune launched simply months in the past on Bandcamp, is a promising indication that’s the case. Grigoroff’s vocal shows each a startling energy and the slip-sliding relationship to straight time evident in one of the best of Souled American, and that’s clearly Adducci’s bass endeavor related guerilla motion.

Jeff Tweedy, writing in World Inside a Music (2023) about Adducci’s “Earlier than Tonight”—the lead minimize on Notes Campfire and a spotlight amongst many others on Rise Above It–says”

It’s the right mixture of the metaphysical and the mundane—the cosmic and the commonplace.  Usually, it’s about time. And the way time strikes at maddeningly inconsistent speeds dependent upon our moods and states of thoughts.

That is greater than an outline of 1 Souled American music. It’s an outline of their total discography. Listening to Souled American, I’ve generally felt like a farmer listening for rain. This isn’t only a listening posture in response to Souled American—it’s what the band seems like they’re engaged in as they file. The music strikes in response to itself in tiny increments however inexorably, like an unlimited distant cloud entrance, music to fly by way of, misplaced in time, enveloped. Issue within the heartland, pleasure in single notes and wayward pitch, wavering intention/consideration, winter wheat, and heydays.  

Many scattered responses to Souled American start with strains like, “I’ve been considering lots about Souled American these days”.

Me too.

Works Cited

Darnielle, John.  “The Mountain Goats: How Souled American’s Flubber Modified My Life”. Harp.  Sept/Oct 2006.

Pleasure, Camden.  Misplaced Pleasure.  Verse Refrain. 2015.

McDermott, Ted. “Spare Songs From a Diminished Land”.  The Believer: Concern 55. 01 July 2008.

Santa, Tracy.  Souled American’s Flubber. The Bay Guardian. 19 September 1993.

Schonfeld, Zach. “Souled American’s ‘Across the Horn’ Is Moody”. PopMatters.  22 Feb 2008.

Tweedy, Jeff.  World Inside a Music: Music That Modified My Life and Life That Modified My Music. Dutton. 2023.