These things tend to be just a bad idea — bands two or three decades removed from their prime trying to recapture what made them successful back in the day. Often such reunions are not much more than dressed-up moneygrabs, a rehash of moldy oldies augmented by a handful of new songs that don’t even come close to the level of the original hits.
That’s perhaps half-true with Here & Now, the new two-disc offering from 1970s mellow-gold folk-rockers America. The second disc is a twelve-song live recording of the band breezing through its best-known songs — “Ventura Highway”, “Tin Man”, “A Horse With No Name”, et al. — in a sort of rushed rehash that amounts to an unnecessary update of their 1975 greatest-hits album History.
The surprise comes with the first disc, which features twelve new compositions that actually measure up quite favorably with the band’s classic work. Which perhaps begs the question as to whether America ever actually had any classic work. Nowadays they’re more likely ridiculed as soft-pop lightweights, or teased with “tributes” such as Austin singer-songwriter Michael Hall’s recent song “America” (“Some said they stole from Neil Young/Some said they stole from Bread/Some said they stole from the Eagles/But they never stole from Free”).
At their best, however, America had a pure pop sensibility that few other artists could match in the mid-’70s, an era that was rife with hummable AM-radio hooks. “Sister Golden Hair”, with its loping, bending guitar riff and irresistibly catchy melody, was probably their signature tune, though the lower-charting “Daisy Jane” was in fact the most gorgeous of their hits, piano and cello blending beautiful bittersweetness in the verses before the choruses bloomed in radiant reassurance. (Both were produced by Beatles impresario George Martin.)
Such songs left their mark on a generation of future pop purveyors — among them Fountains Of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger and James Iha of Smashing Pumpkins, who co-produced Here & Now. Indeed, Iha’s resplendent 1998 solo album Let It Come Down may well have been the most America-esque record since History itself. Also turning up on Here & Now are Ryan Adams, Ben Kweller, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Patrick Hallahan, and Nada Surf’s Ira Elliot and Matthew Caws.
But the focus is squarely on America singer-songwriters Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell. (Original member Dan Peek, who split with the band in the late ’70s, does not appear.) Their easygoing vocals, a hallmark of America’s hits, sound no worse for a quarter-century’s wear. More importantly, they’re still writing melodies as memorable as those that climbed the charts way back then, even if today’s charts don’t really have room for such solid songcraft anymore.
The opening triptych — “Chasing The Rainbow”, “Indian Summer” and “One Chance” — immediately establishes Here & Now as much more than a hackneyed comeback effort. This is lush, lustrous, layered stuff, the type that has long since gone out of style but never stopped sounding good.
To my ears, Beckley’s tunes, then as now, are the ones that shine brightest. Bunnell’s “Ride On” — which features not only Adams on electric guitar and Kweller on wurlitzer, but even fellow ’70s star Stephen Bishop (“Save It For A Rainy Day”) on harmony vocals — has been tapped as the first single, but Beckley’s “Always Love” is a richer and more vibrant track.
Much of the credit goes to Iha and Schlesinger, who frame Beckley and Bunnell’s pop gems in a manner that recalls the greatness of their earlier work without dating it as such. Here & Now lives up to the modernity of its title, yet it doesn’t take America out of its essential element. Maybe you can go home again, after all.
