After four albums on Jagjaguwar with his band Manishevitz around the turn of the millennium, it wasn’t until 2017 that Adam Ostrar put out his debut solo album, Brawls in the Briar. Something of a musical patchwork, the album incorporated a diverse set of influences to stitch its own distinctive sound—owing as much to 70s-style soft rock as more traditional finger-picked folk. Tying this together was the clever blend of personal and political in Ostrar’s lyrics, using the former to create an emotional intimacy and the latter to carve depth and meaning.
Adam Ostrar is back with a follow-up record, The Worried Coat, and his ambitions are no less impressive. Working with collaborators from the likes of Califone, The Boxhead Ensemble and The Lofty Pillars, Ostrar uses the album to develop his playful, experimental folk-rock hybrid, though the groovy tone hides the its true nature. Very much a product of our time, The Worried Coat collects various divergent voices to create the true fabric of present-day America. Careful to avoid any easy stereotypes or caricature, the Ostrar hurdles concepts like ‘red’ or ‘blue’, ‘good’ or bad’ and instead presents an entire society shaped by abstract forces like nostalgia, nationalism, capitalism and corruption. “It’s twelve narratives on otherness, self-identity, and our personal relationships with anxiety,” Ostrar explains. “How we often betray our best intentions through willful ignorance.”
Emerging from a gentle, honeyed rhythm, ‘Kansas City’ is a prime example of Ostrar’s ability to juxtapose mood and theme. The track finds Joe the Plumber gazing back into a sepia tone past, the warm instrumentation lapping at the edge of his memories. Only, the kicker is that no such past existed, his nostalgia centred on a time embellished and idealised within his head.
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Elsewhere, we have displaced refugees (‘Bloody Waves’), environmental activists (‘Storm the Beach’), imperialist bigots (‘Walk the Savages Home’) and even evangelical snake-oil peddlers who might just be named after an infamous radio host (‘Alex the Cretin’). Veering between psychedelic rock, laidback pop and sparse hymns, the sound is as varied as its cast of characters, the threads uniting into a very American tapestry that could be said to show a dystopian future, if only the scene wasn’t so God damned familiar.
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The Worried Coat is out now on Super Secret Records.
