John Cougar Mellencamp
No Better Than This

With this album, Mellencamp manages, perhaps, to explain and give the journey its rightful meaning, which is to experience the places you visit not just as simple tourists, sometimes suspicious of customs different from their own, but to live the places by immersing yourself in them, blending in, and testing yourself with customs and traditions. His is a highly successful journey through the time and places that have made the United States the modern mother of rock.
If it's not one of his masterpieces, it's very close. The previous "Life death love and freedom" was already a great album, but this new effort surpasses it, if only for the way it was conceived, planned, and played.

Mellencamp has been searching for that vintage sound for several years, which the encounter with musician and producer T Bone Burnett brought to the forefront, turning this album into a journey across America from the 1920s to the 1950s. Surpassing by far the works of the latest Dylan, who is treading the same path of sound exploration.
A puff to the dust covering old instruments forgotten in the attic, refueling at the first open gas station, and the album takes you on a journey with closed eyes through a bygone America that still represents the freedom and dream that modernity can never erase.

What makes the difference in this album is its conception. Mellencamp wanted to let himself be carried away by the emotions that certain places and situations dear to old American music stirred in him. So he set out with only an old microphone towards three destinations full of meaning, letting them influence his writing. A journey where country, folk, rock'n'roll, and songwriting mark the path for both him and any American who approaches music. Who hasn't imagined what it would feel like to enter the mythical room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Francisco where in 1936 a young man of color invented the blues, leaving behind a few songs that became inspiration for all future generations. Stepping into the shoes of Robert Johnson and sitting in the same spot of the room where the bluesman sat, Mellencamp composes Right behind me, a blues supported by Miriam Sturm's violin, where the invocation of the devil is almost mandatory.
Next stop is the Sun Studio in Memphis where in the fifties four lads with strong personalities began to spoil the musical world with rock'n'roll. Here Mellencamp composes the majority of the songs, recorded live just like they used to be. Aided by Andy York, Marc Ribot and Burnett himself on guitars, David Roe, legendary bassist for Johnny Cash on bass, and Jay Bellerose on drums. Out come songs with a strong Rockabilly vein like the first single that gives the album its title No better than this, Coming down the road or Each day of sorrow.

Folk songs like the opening Save some time to dream where the invitation to find time to dream is evident, or the deep folk darkness of The west end.Finally, the stop at the first American Baptist church in Savannah, Georgia, a symbolic place for African American slaves seeking escape during the Civil War. Here, above the sacred floorboards, come to life acoustic and love songs like the melancholic Thinking about you, the most Dylan-esque Love at first sight, and the final Clumsy of world. To seal it all, during the recordings, Mellencamp and his partner got baptized in this special place, marking an important milestone in both his career and life.

A lived album and a complete journey, physical and emotional that has been immortalized in these thirteen songs and at least another dozen that hopefully, will see the light at some point. In this work, Mellencamp leaves an important piece of his heart; it's up to us to try and pick it up.

P.S. I think I’ve stolen a review from Currahee 72, but I'm sure he can rewrite it and do even better.