On this record, the revered Chicago singer-songwriter Michael McDermott is evidently charged up from the get go and hits the ground running (or more likely driving since This Is America) with The Best We Get. In this he explains ”You gotta keep on keepin’ on”; not the most profound or specific advice you are likely to hear this year but this is blue collar, anthemic rock straight outta the heartland so gotta take what you get.
With Always A Ways Away he continues to go full Petty with smart lines like “I ain’t got a problem with drink but drink’s got a problem with me”. For Nobody he finds freedom in anonymity.
In But For The Little Moments McDermott sings of abandoning an heroic search for glory days in order to find a deeper meaning in quieter moments. The song itself still rocks pretty hard though and exemplifies the dilemma of trying to combine the tough with the tender and the personal with the political. It’s a difficult balancing act and choosing the default option of strident rock tends to steamroller any credible accounts of soul searching. In Old Feelings, for instance, he sings of sickness in the soul but doesn’t sound particularly vulnerable.
He does story songs too. Johnny Sparrow and The Sunset Girl is the tale of an Irish kid from the Bronx who promises to become a better man to win the hand of a cute neighbour. In this McDermott apes the Springsteen trick of mythologizing commonplace love stories into something more grandiose.
Where he scores best is in The Future , an angry state of US nation address with lyrics that pull no punches and include the defiant affirmation that “Here we don’t bow to any king and certainly not a clown from Queens.” For this track alone, I can forgive the macho brashness elsewhere.
McDermott closes with a piano ballad Ain’t Life Beautiful which name-checks temptation, salvation and redemption in a more contemplative manner. It's a welcome four minutes of philosophical calm after the storming numbers that precede it.
