Thirteen-song LP, CD, and cassette that was originally released April 14, 1989 by Rough Trade US and re-released ten years later on CD as part of tUMULT's "Framed" boxed set.

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Souled American: Flubber

Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 13 June 1989

BECAUSE DAD SOLD toys for a living (a mixed blessing, believe me), I was the first kid on our block to own a glob of Flubber, the "flying rubber" introduced in Disney's 1961 comedy, The Absent Minded Professor. A clear, glutinous substance, Flubber could be stretched, bounced, and used to pick up colored images, dirt, and bodily oils. A few hours of activity transformed the goo into a gray mucus the family dog truly savored. Unfortunately, the toy was yanked off the shelves after triggering allergic reactions in tender child flesh. [End Warning.]

Souled American's brand of Flubber (Rough Trade) is no less murky, malleable, and toxic than the album's namesake. Epitomizing what Gram Parsons called "cosmic American music," or psychedelic C&W, Flubber is easily the most spaced-out clod of honky-tonk heaven/hell since Oar, Skip Spence's '69 post-Moby Grape solo record. For three years Chicago's Souled American has grappled with hazy, expansive spaces overlooked by mainstream country acts from Bakersfield to Nashville, the so-called new traditionalists, and all the other cowboys. Communicating in dusty lyric fragments colored by deceptively catchy folk-rockisms, the quartet, both here and on its overlooked debut Fe, overflows with enthusiasm and conviction rooted in a tough love of such country, folk, and rock icons as Hank Williams, George Jones, Dylan… and Bob Marley?

Yep. Souled American – and spot 'em the squaresville brand, hoss – has jabbed its spurs into the Caribbean/Gulf cost nexus (insert your own Mekons comparison here). Grounded in a downbeat twang, SoulAm blows off most country conventions: Joe Adducci's clucking, croaking bass drives the band, Jamaica-style, while drummer Jamey Barnard works slap-and-pelt patterns reminiscent of Crescent City brass and cajun rhythms as imagined by Sly Dunbar (the Bellamy Bros. sang ‘Get Into Reggae Cowboy’; on the Flubber CD, SoulAm replies with ‘Marleyphine Hank’, some mighty fine roots-rodeo reggae). Guitarist Scott Tuma lurks in the background, plucking ersatz pedal-steel chord clusters that float like lazy summer fireflies.

Something dire, lonely, and edge-of-the-wasteland lies at the heart of most of Adducci’s and Chris Grigoroff's songs. Rendered in the thickest drawls I've ever heard, their tunes twist and change shape in the hearing, with key lyrics achieving a pinnacle of indeterminacy, if not sheer poetry. "Go slow and nice, " begins ‘All Good Things’ – or is it "go slow on ice" or even "ghosts low on ice"?

While the two singers' voices are often indistinguishable (Grigoroff rasps more), their material also emerges from complementary gothic environs, real Cormac McCarthy territory. Where Adducci contributes two songs about hangmen, Grigoroff chimes in with ‘Drop in the Basket’, in which a church goes up in flames during collection. In ‘Mar'boro Man’, a woman learns "just how the other half of her feels"; and with the album's closer, ‘Why, Are You’, the two contradict Heraclitus and themselves, singin' 'bout how "it's the same old river, nothin' 'bout this ol' river has changed." For all its obscurity, SoulAm dives headlong into the unspoken existential eddies of the workingman's blues, providing bait for the thinking cowpoke's mental honky-tonk.

But tonks don't get any honkier than the Rodeo Bar, where SoulAm turned in an inspiring three-set extravaganza May 22. Used to performing for devoted hundreds in their hometown, the group is so awesomely ungroovy here that a couple dozen luckouts could sit back, sip two-bit tequila shots, and enjoy a band teetering on the cusp of brilliance. Two nights later, however, at their Knitting Factory industry showcase, the club might as well have been playing Vern Gosdin for all the attention the band received. The group left the stage in a minute and a huff.

You don't miss your water until your well runs dry, but I reckon Souled American's in it for the long haul. Providing the music's, or the business's, intrinsic darknesses don't drag them down. "America is a dangerous place, " wrote Greil Marcus in his Mystery Train chapter on The Band. To be soiled, souled, or sold – that is the question.