I missed one

Maybe it's the fact that I had the top off the Jeep Wrangler, but I was able to take a liking to another song off Velvet Revolver’s Libertad. Maybe I pronounced them dead to early.

The issue I had with Libertad is there's nothing memorable about it. The production values are high, it sounds ready for radio and super produced. The marketing plan is in high gear. Slash can shred. But there's nothing I want to go back to, play for a friend, or burn to a playlist. There's nothing for me to put in my pocket and take with me.

With a couple exceptions now I guess. I mentioned “Last Fight” in a previous post, but the one that I heard again yesterday was “American Man.” I know a song is rising for me when I hear it the second or third time and my mind already has the shape of the track. As I hear it the second or third time I’m able to recall what the song is going to do next. Call it music muscle memory, but it’s usually a good thing because those bread crumbs usually mean the song is going the right direction. And you remembered it.

That’s what happened for me with “American Man.” I also totally missed the killer guitar riff at the start of the song during my first listen. Slash just blasts a water ski wake intro that is rock solid. Then something peculiar happens. The mix of the song turns down the guitar in favor of Weiland’s vocal and the riff never reaches the heights of the intro. This is a total bummer because the song could have been a burner. As it stands now it’s still a nice track. “American Man” has the circular guitar riff you hear in a lot of the Foo Fighters stuff especially “Everlong.” “American Man” would sound fantastic in a helmets-off-hockey-warm-up for say the World Junior Tournament. Team USA would cast a heavy shadow with this blasting behind them. Consider “American Man” for your next trip to the treadmill. If only we could have kept the guitar knob at ELEVEN.