Record Review: Quasi's "American Gong"

Quasi’s always been a singular band: a keys-and-drums abusing divorced couple singing in joyous, angelic voices about the futility of life, love and the pursuit of happiness. Its latest, American Gong, sounds less fraggy and unique as touring bassist Joanna Bolme has joined the duo as a full-time member and, in a time-honored rock’n’roll tradition, Sam Coomes has neglected his organs for an electric guitar. But it’s not, thankfully, a lead guitar. Coomes hacks, chunks and chops, his guitar bleats and wails but it rarely sings and it certainly doesn’t trill. The recording is blown out and distorted like a cassette recording of a hot AM radio signal. A song titled “Rockabilly Party” by any other band wouldn’t make it off the CD onto my computer but here, it’s brilliant, a lick that isn’t quite stolen from a Neil Young tune nourished into a sweet, bitter, apocalyptic stomper. At its height, it sounds like the world is coming apart and you’re like “finally.”

The lyrics? Emotionally, Sam Coomes is a set of Russian dolls, happiness nestled inside of sadness inside happiness inside sadness and so on, ad infinitum. Coomes may even rival the master, John Prine, for delivering wrist-slitting lines while sounding as if he’s about to crack up. His writing is subtler here than on his early records, hence less immediately impactful. It’s true that “the receding tanlines of a teenage dream” isn’t quite as harrowing as The Donner Party’s “first you take your shit and then you cram it down your throat” but it may yield a greater multiplicity of meaning on repeated listens.

When lots of folks are giving away music that’s not worth the space it takes up on your hard drive—don’t tell me saving [this baby otter pounding malt liquor] as your desktop image isn’t a wiser investment of bytes than the latest rcrd_lbl offering—American Gong is actually worth money. It’s a big fuzzy meatball of good time downer jams, just a couple of kids singing happily about the end of days.