If there’s any central theme on “American Grin,” the newest LP from OKC country-rockers Jason Scott and the High Heat, it’s that everything characteristic of “country” – the truck driving, the hard drinking, the weed pulling, and the boot-scooting – is all just a spitshine on something worn or dirty.
The whiskey-swilling bar anthem “Me and the Bottle” isn’t about partying. It’s about heartbreak and unhealthy coping.
The suburban, dirt-digging “Yardwork” isn’t about that favorite working-class pastime of lawn-tending. It’s about non-functioning depression.
Even the coasting highway ballad “Interstate of Mind” (surely one of the record’s standouts) isn’t actually about the big sky freedom of an open road and a pickup. It’s about the search for God in a time and a country that only worships commerce and widescreen advertising.
They’re all songs inverting the easy expectations of what a country song is supposed to be about.
The “American Grin” of the title, then, is the smile you wear over the pain, the old Southern remedy of “grin and bear it.”
Whereas their 2022 national breakout “Castle Rock” was all about digging into the deeper stories beneath the southern fried masks of the most common country characters, “American Grin” is more set on zooming out to examine the masks themselves and not only what they’re hiding, but how they’re hiding it.
While any of the pencil-perfect beards and spotless hats on country radio and CMT would have you believe that everybody wants to be a country boy, Scott and his posse are here to remind you that you’re only a country boy because you live the life. Not the other way around.
But lest you think this is all a dour affair laden with metaphor and commentary, let me assure you that it’s primarily fun, catchy, hook-driven, and head-nodding.
The tracks ebb and flow between textural ballads and alt-country anthems, all tailored for rolling the windows down and singing back against the wind rushing in, so much so that the album appropriately opens with the sounds of getting into an old car, turning the engine, and scrolling the radio.
Along the way, the High Heat boys make sure to mix up the sounds and stylistic touches with all sorts of southern affectations and westernalia.
Kickoff track “High Country” blends in the requisite Morricone-style whistling and trumpets for its “old west” atmosphere, but it still feels right at home next to something like “Bernadette,” with its 80s power-pop chords and chorus-heavy guitars that recall Bryan Adams at his most jean jacket-y.
None of which would be worth much, of course, if the songs didn’t hit. But they do.
Even the most creatively produced tracks are anchored by comfortable melodies and immediately memorable hooks that leave their stamps all over the record, even as so much here is fleeting and quickly transitory.
The sounds of radio preachers and porch-hanging wind chimes blow in and out before you can catch them, and even the whole song “Golden” fades out slowly on the wind right after launching out of its bridge, like it’s ducking out of the party for fear of overstaying its welcome.
There are songs here on either side of the rocking/delicate divide that will contend among the year’s best tracks some months from now.
Numerical centerpiece “Natalie” is the album’s most vulnerable track, both in its confidently minimal arpeggios and wide open production and in its confident commitment to just being a straight-up love song, wearing its heart on its rolled-up sleeve.
It’s a testament to the strength of a simple, solid song without the crutches of irony or flash, and it’s almost definitely the best moment of the album’s forty minutes.
Overall, “American Grin” is a refreshingly honest and thoughtfully sympathetic take on all the easiest caricatures of country music, from the tire-kicking journeymen and the community sweethearts to the lovelorn balladeers and the white knuckle alcoholics.
It may not all strike as immediately personal or intimate as “Castle Rock” did, but after the rousing success of that record, it makes perfect sense that Scott and the gang have recalibrated their sights against the very country costumes that they’re expected to wear on the national stage.
Fortunately for us, Scott doesn’t seem too interested in easy expectations.
“American Grin” by Jason Scott & The High Heat is available everywhere now from Leo33 Records. For more, visit jsandthehighheat.com.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
