If you had listened to the explosive and thought provoking first self-titled album from Dead Pioneers and wondered how they could possibly capture lightning in a bottle twice then this is how. PO$T AMERICAN is every bit the elegant and brutal, informed and incendiary set of songs that were on their debut. In many ways this is the sequel that outperforms the original, but that feels a bit like trying to choose your favourite child. Writer and vocalist Gregg Deal says, “We took this album seriously in knowing that the sophomore effort for any band is a make-or-break moment. This feels like an extension to the first record, and we learned a lot from that, so we wrote with that in mind for sure: thinking it over, working through ideas and inspirations with a deliberate effort.”
The righteous vitriol for imperialism, white power and it’s (cowboy) boot on the neck of the indigenous American population that fuelled the last album, has been ramped up since the election of Trump, what Deal refers to as “the gross existence of capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy and the many oppressive forces that have come to inform everything around us.” No surprise as to why there’s a dollar sign in the album’s title.
It’s not just about who’s shouting the loudest, but in a climate where rhetoric is full of empty platitudes like ‘Make America Great Again’ and social media dog whistles it’s so refreshing to hear anger and indignation from an intelligence source for a change. There are so many moments on the album where you find yourself getting that dizzying feeling when your perception is turned on its head. On the last album it was ‘Bad Indian’ and here we have ‘The Caucasity’ with Deal recounting how he interrupted by a young white man when speaking at a school who asked him “why do you spend so much time complaining and not putting your energy into helping your people?” No spoilers but Deal’s response expertly shines a light on the gloomy maxim that ‘history is written by the victors.’
Once again the brilliance of Gregg Deal’s words are more than matched by the band, Josh Rivera (guitar), Abe Brennan (guitar), Lee Tesche (bass), and Shane Zweygardt (drums) who are integral to delivering the message. There are the pyroclastic bursts of punk energy on ‘Dead Pioneers’, ‘STFU’, and ‘My Spirit Animal Ate Your Spirit Animal’ (see video below) which are balanced against calmer tracks such as ‘White Whine’, ‘Bloodletting Carnival’ and ‘Fire and Ash’, where the delicate guitar playing matches the beauty of the lyrics. Vocalist Ren Alridge from Petrol Girls also adds perfect bittersweet irony to ‘Love Language’. But whether the songs are being screamed into your psyche or flow in like water each one offers so much information, entertainment and revelation it makes you want to go back to listen again and again, like a brilliant novel or a richly detailed painting.
Even without the incredible words the music would still dazzle in its ability to shake the ground or soothe the amygdala, but luckily Gregg Deal is a lyrical auteur. His economy of language cuts like a scalpel to the mechanics of oppression and how it has been baked into the modern psyche via films and stories; those who control the narrative control the power. PO$T AMERICAN shows that information doesn’t have to be textbook-dry but can be exhilarating at the same time it changes your perspective. This is art against artifice and it’s spectacular.
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Review by Paul F Cook
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