402 Productions » NW Reviews: American Dollar

07th Jan2010

NW Reviews: American Dollar – Atlas

by nickwan

Post-rock isn’t necessarily my business, to say the least. American Dollar is nothing short of post-rock. And like their mid-nineties brethren, they aren’t really striking any new chords that we haven’t heard. But, unlike the shortcomings of certain pop-punk revivalists, American Dollar and their newest album Atlas is in the right place at the right time, even though we have heard this all before.

In the past year, post-rock and prog-rock has been on a rise, varying between a more indie-rock appeal like Russian Circles, or holding true to their past ambient ways like Massive Attack. Sigur Ros is always relevant to this post/prog-rock scene like how Arcade Fire is relevant to the indie scene. Both of those bands have something in common: they are both still revered in music relevancy when it comes to music in recent time. However, much like how blink-182 and New Found Glory had many copy cats and not many breakthrough artists in the midst, Sigur Ros and Arcade Fire followers are having a tough time weathering the confusing storm of relevancy.

American Dollar’s Atlas is definitely swimming upstream hard. The album itself is very consistent in the sound, introducing a strong, contrasting mix of live instrumentals against an electronica-type back track. Similar to Massive Attack in ways, the album doesn’t sway from their sound into something else using overly-jarring guitars or hardcore breakdowns. However, much more like Russian Circles’ attempts, American Dollar is trying to develop their sound in the indie music scene rather than the already-existing, and quickly about-to-die, art-rock scene. Art-rock itself has been taken over lately by noise-rock bands… view the video below if you dare.

With music that resembles this, how could bands like American Dollar and Russian Circles thrive? Unfortunately, the bad-music scene is doing more than enough to cover up potentially tons of great new material… they are just sunk into a scene that is rendered irrelevant.

So, now that I’ve done my best in justifying this album’s shortcomings, here’s the album’s review:

Consistency and simplicity. Although it wouldn’t be proper to say this music is “simple”, as it is very complex, the idea seems to be simple: instrumental post-rock, playing the instruments we know how to play. Simple formula sometimes over looked by many post-rock bands. They aren’t doing too much, and the lot that they are doing is very full and rich. It’s always a pro when an album is flawless in production, as is this one. And it’s also always a pro when there hasn’t been too many bands like American Dollar trying to maximize their status in the indie music scene. So, for trying something new in a scene that doesn’t really include this music natively yet, it’s a pro.

It’s hard to say, but the con to this album is the same con Matthew Price ran into this year. The only advantage to this is that this album is pressing forward in a scene that hasn’t formed a strong progressive/post-rock identity yet. As far as Matt Price is concerned, his target scene definitely has formed an identity for the type of music he is playing. Since the newly forming identity in the indie scene is based on only a few bands, it’s not as much of a con as initially thought of.

In the end, however, it’s hard to say this band is doing something new when bands in the mid and late 90s have done much of what they have done already. Since the band is pushing ahead in a new scene, they do get a plus point. Although, with the precedent of others who are relatively well known (see God Speed You! Black Emperor, et al), it’s tough to say this is competitive for an album of the year nomination. Maybe at the midterms in June, if this is still an album I turn to, my mind might change. Until then:

Relay

P.S. to ease the ears from what you heard in that YouTube video above, here is some American Dollar. First video is their “single” from their album Atlas and the second is a live video. Enjoy!