Ackles is another artist I’ve never heard of before. He’s a singer-songwriter in the chanson style, sounding a little bit like Scott Walker (especially on Scott 2 where Walker covers a lot of Jacques Brel songs), maybe a dash of Randy Newman, and a sprinkle of Tom Lehrer.
The songs on here are largely tragi-comic tales of thwarted dreams and failure. The opening, and title, track American Gothic, is a tale of a woeful marriage where the wife prostitutes herself so she can afford new shoes, and her husband consoles himself with drink and pornography but in the end, as Ackles sings (or pronounces, it’s that kind of “musical talking” you get in the chanson style) “They suffer least, who suffer what they choose”. Ship Of State is a satire on the government, especially how war veterans are treated (not directly spoken, but Vietnam is implied).
Some tracks are more romantic, especially Love’s Enough, but then One Night Stand is a kind of parody on romantic songs (“I might even miss you. Hey, what’s your name?”). There aren’t very many upbeat songs, only the slightly jazzy Oh California (which touches on climate change).
Other joyful topics – a radicalised Native American sets bombs in Blues For Billy Whitecloud, a couple break up in Waiting For The Moving Van, and in a lengthy saga, dreams of revitalising a family farm meet with failure in Montana Song.
Produced by Bernie Taupin, this is largely Ackles at the piano, sometimes with orchestral or jazz woodwind/brass backing. It’s not a cheerful album, either lyrically or musically, about as somber as the Frank Sinatra album way back at the start of this list. It’s not in any sense *bad*, Ackles has a good voice, the music is often interestingly arranged (think some of Leonard Cohen’s songs). I think it’s similar to Brel’s album – my French wasn’t up to translating that on the fly but reading about the song topics, and from the general tone of the album, it’s the same kind of celebration of bleakness. Like a Chekov play. If you enjoy celebrating a bit of misery, this is one for you.
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