Customer Reviews

Americanitis

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Though he's fronted critics-darling bands like Will & The Bushmen and The Bis-Quits, Kimbrough's been most widely seem and heard as a sideman for Steve Forbert, Jimmy Buffet, Kim Richey, and Rodney Crowell. His recent tours with Crowell have heavily influenced both the songwriting and singing on this second solo album. The joyful observations of "Life" and mid-life wake-up of "Grown Up Now" are of a piece with Crowell's recent self explorations, and the bluntness of "Less Polite" has a similar lyric tone to Crowell's work on "The Outsider."

Kimbrough's latest songs provide a meditation on the meaning of being an American in the twenty-first century. He explores the ironies and contradictions that make up the American character, including the avarice of white collar crime ("I Lie" "Act Like Nothing's Wrong") and the duality of America's thirst for both God and guns ("Pride," delivered as a T Bone Burnett styled spoken word, and the hymnal "Warring Ways"). The album's second half includes a variety of blues, including the electric "Another Train" the acoustic gospel-tinged "Wind Blowing Change," the soulful pop "Another Train," and the funereal "Perfect Desert Blue."

The album closes with "Brand New Song," marrying the folk construction of Woody Guthrie with the spiritual depth of Johnny Cash. It's an unusually positive and hopeful close to an album full of biting social study and interpersonal observation. [©2006 hyperbolium dot com]

In this day of homogenized "more of the same", Will K. has created a social-political statement with an impressive mix of pop and Americana.
Simply put, this is a great record.

This album is a great mix of musical styles and really showcases Will's talents. It has rockers, ballads, and a nice spoken word number in Pride. There are some great gems here, my favorites are Life, Grown Up Now, Less Polite, Everyone's In Love, and Enemy. With 17 tracks on the album, there is a lot of favorites there. Will has notes on each song at his website which you should check out. I have not been able to pop this in the player and only listen to it once, everytime it seems to repeat at least halfway before it gets changed. This CD is a must have for any music fan.

Just saw this guy live last night, opened for and played with Rodney Crowell. This guy is amazing. Great album.

IN a vein long unmined, Will Kimbrough brings back topical music, with a vengeance. "I lie" sums up the mores of the powerful and rich in America
while "Act like Nothing's Wrong" gives you the instruction to survive it. His writing skills, to the point AND musical bring back a too-long lost genre in the U.S. - songs with a message besides sappy-love-drips.
Try him on for size, no lies involved, and with very little exageration brings the mirror up to our faces and dares us not to see ourselves - "Warring Ways" tells it like it is. The song craftsmanship is first rate and if you don't mind music making you think, this is a Great American Album/CD. 'nuff said. Kc

Cleaver lyrics on a myrid of subjects in the fine tradition of singer,songwriter.The sprinkling in of harmonica always works for me being a player myself.I particularly enjoyed Grown up now and Less polite.

The indie/alt/country/folk section of my CD collection includes musicians like Steve Earle, Dan Bern, Mary Gauthier, and John Prine (among many others), and of course, Todd Snider. I've been following Todd for years, but somehow I overlooked Will Kimbrough's music until this CD, Americanitis. Will plays in Todd's band (he's one of the Nervous Wrecks, I believe), so I was expecting Will's music to sound a lot like Todd's... and it's certainly influenced by him, but Will has his own thing going on.

Every track has a different feel, from bar room songs to war protests to love ballads (maybe the love part is a stretch of my imagination, but I made it fit), each grounded in solid songwriting. His lyrics are funny, surprising, depressing, and painfully honest. Everyone in my family likes Americanitis (even if it has pissed off my budding Republican of a son a few times), and I've caught them all trying to remember verses after only playing the CD a handful of times.

What connects the songs on this CD is the ongoing thread of the title, the affliction of being American. Life is complicated, and Will has obviously put in a lot of time contemplating our modern condition. It's music like this that makes me appreciate what vestiges of freedom we still have as Americans, even as I cringe at the news from at home and abroad of the increasing selfishness, greed, and pride that have become synonymous with being from the USA.

Will's CD is Americana music at it's best: it sounds good and feels almost familiar, and it says a lot of things we haven't been listening to--but need to be hearing--about being American.