America
Here & Now (Disc 1)

Semi-unknown but historical band, attractive cover, and bargain price: I thought I had found a pearl in the pigsty when purchasing this double album by America dated 2006, carelessly stuffed among albums of Vasco Rossi, Daniele Silvestri, Biagio Antonacci, Michael Jackson, Tokio Hotel & Co. Unfortunately, my "Pearl" turned out to be nothing more than an ordinary colored glass bead.

To be clear, "Here & Now" is not terrible; I've come across far worse, but despite the good intentions of the everlasting band and some catchy and tasteful melodies, it doesn't go beyond the pure and simple practice of craftsmanship, creatively flat and dampened by a rather indolent sound that the ear perceives as old and stale rather than classic, ending up in a record time being shelved and forgotten.

The beginning of the work, however, is encouraging: "Chasing The Rainbow" is perhaps the best song of the album: an ecstatic, semi-acoustic ballad, linear and engaging, in pure America style; the subsequent "Indian Summer" is also of good quality, a rhythmic song with a vaguely exotic undertone, but the alarm bell begins to ring with the subsequent "One Chance", a mawkish ballad without backbone that would fit in an album of the Backstreet Boys like cheese on macaroni. The other glimpses of class from "Here & Now" come from "Golden", a pleasant country-like ballad, one of the very few songs on the album to have a truly convincing melody, "Always Love", another ballad, this time tending towards pop rock which, if not exactly a masterpiece, at least manages to keep the listener from dozing off, "Ride On", a slightly psychedelic and slightly on the road mishmash, with Ryan Adams on the bass, demonstrating an attempt at sound research that is nonetheless appreciable, and finally, the intriguing bonus track "Glass King", again with Adams on the bass, which with its cadenced rhythm winks at the classic "A Horse With No Name", while the rest of the album is built from a jumble of highly soporific ballads ("This Time", "Love & Leaving", "All I Think About Is You") and insipid pop rock/soft rock sketches ("Look At Me Now", "Work To Do", "Walk In The Woods") that make the album's rating plummet.

It will appeal to the purists and the most die-hard fans of the band, but frankly, this album seems to me a shining example of how time wears down some artists, turning them into sterile copies of themselves: just listen to songs like "A Horse With No Name", "Ventura Highway", "Tin Man", "Don't Cross The River" or "Lonely People", contained on the second, live disc of "Here & Now" to reach this bitter conclusion. What a pity.