ALBUM REVIEW: American Aquarium Takes Stock and Rocks Out on ‘The Fear of Standing Still’

For the last two decades, American Aquarium frontman BJ Barham has seemingly willed his band to survive. Armed with an incisive pen and a love for Whiskeytown and Drive-by Truckers on one hand and Springsteen and Petty on the other, he gradually steered the rotating cast of his outfit from twentysomething dive bar revelry and heartbreak toward a more thoughtful, albeit scarred, maturity. There’s been plenty of inflection points, from the relative breakthrough of 2012’s Jason Isbell-produced Burn. Flicker. Die. and the wash-and-rinse new lineup in 2018 to more personal upheavals like sobriety, marriage, and fatherhood, all of which has created a natural arc that is well represented in the songs themselves.

In many ways, The Fear of Standing Still, the band’s 10th album of originals, feels like it stands on the mountain of the last 20 years and surveys the field. Pairing up once again with producer Shooter Jennings, who also worked with the band on 2020’s Lamentations, Barham and company turn in a concise set of songs that aim to make more use of their rock-and-roll impulses after the more folk-inflected 2022 effort Chicamacomico (ND review). The opening “Crier” announces this intent with its barreling drums and distorted guitars as Barham sings at his throatiest, while other tunes like “Messy as a Magnolia,” “The Getting Home,” and the closing “Head Down, Feet Moving” ensure the group will have plenty of new heartland-style rockers to slide into the setlist and showcase their well-honed cohesion. There are also bits of indie rock flourish that the band has occasionally dabbled in as well, from the echo-laden guitars that grace “Cherokee Purple” to the dreamy keyboard intro on “Southern Roots.”

But, as has always been the case with American Aquarium, it’s the songwriting that continues to capture the imagination most. Barham’s earliest songs foregrounded a sense of fatalism and personal turmoil, and each new record, particularly since Burn. Flicker. Die., seems to find him gradually easing his way out of that darkness. “Honey, take my hand / What part of I ain’t leaving don’t you understand,” he sings on the romantic ode “Magnolias,” a song that owns the difficulties of long-term relationships even as it rings triumphant.

The song’s deft use of autobiographical detail and sharply observed storytelling to get at larger truths and revelations is something that Barham has gotten increasingly adept at over the years, and that skill is evident here. “The Curse of Growing Old” pairs reflections on mortality with his dad’s experience watching the Daytona 500 crash that killed Dale Earnhardt. “Babies Making Babies,” a teenage abortion tale, connects women’s control of their bodies to the cycle of rural poverty. And the aforementioned “Crier” examines the folky elements of toxic masculinity and makes a case for embracing emotional vulnerability.

American Aquarium (photo by Joshua Black Wilkins)

The power of Barham’s craft gets its finest showcase on the album’s centerpiece, the Katie Pruitt duet and co-write “Southern Roots,” which gets at all the messy sociological conflict and personal redemption that is now at the heart of the American Aquarium project. “You can’t change the way you sound / you can only change the words that you choose,” Barham sings, “So I’m putting in the work / I’m digging in the dirt / I’m replanting my Southern roots.”

While Barham is part of a host of Southern songwriters looking to broaden and complicate the scope and vision of the region, few are as exacting and forthright in that purpose. God bless him for it.

American Aquarium’s The Fear of Standing Still is out July 26 on Losing Side Records and Thirty Tigers.