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Rating:
Satisfied with a very long career, certainly not epoch-making but exceedingly gratifying, the duo (illo tempore trio, for a good ten initial years) America, in 2011, made ends meet by releasing this cover album, aimed at infusing their typical adult and rounded style into some compositions, carefully chosen from those that certainly inspired and thrilled them over the years.
The authors promoted to undergo a sweet country pop reinterpretation by the exquisite and respectable Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley are, in order: Paul Simon, Fountains of Wayne (who?), Joni Mitchell, Beach Boys, New Radicals, Mark Knopfler, Jimmy Webb, Zombies, James Taylor, Neil Young, Gin Blossoms (how?), and dulcis in fundo the Nobel prize for charm, Bobby Dylan.
Years go by, America sing better and better, accumulating experience and thoroughness in abundance, but the voice of Gerry Beckley, alas, continues to increase in nasality. It takes me half the album to get used to it, as usual. There are singers who initially make me scratch, then I get accustomed to them, and I accept them. Besides Beckley, others that come to mind who initially make me itch are, for example, Carmen Consoli, or Edoardo Bennato, even Barry Gibb… there are quite a few! Going back to America, better then and always the singing of mate Dewey Bunnell, more dry, direct, and sober.
The album is recorded with the help of a fine bunch of Nashville musicians, and therefore sounds professional, adult (actually, a bit oldish), perfectly produced and superbly mixed. Abstain under 40, except for those kids attracted by vintage and envy people like us, who are vintage by birth. Like the niece of a friend of mine, bless her, who is twenty and has her uncle gift her LPs of the Doors, John Mayall, Love, Velvet Underground like there’s no tomorrow!
Sorry for the digression: I care for America for those four, five albums of diluted but musically and vocally inspired country rock from the early days. Therefore, I also snapped up this CD (for four euros, in the used section), oh yes.
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