Review Summary: I can't believe it, the way you sing sometimes...
"The first thing I remember/Was the friction in the room", solemnly begins Greg Graffin within the song "Opinion", the intro to his first solo album, as such beginning a highly-detailed reflection of events following the first break-up with his spouse, against a set of harmonic backing chants and acoustic guitars. And what better sentiment to make than one that would not only make your average Bad Religion fan do a double take to make sure if they chose the correct artist, but one that colours
American Lesion's attitude right from the get-go.
Think of Greg as that type of protagonist you often see in animated series about gifted high-schoolers who regularly save the world from supervillains so frequently that it's basically their day job, yet the moment they find themselves in a typified real-world situation like going out on a date or sitting a test, they make a complete ass out of themselves. In this case, for all the political condemnations and diatribes Graffin has thrown at the higher-ups and punk rock fans for over 30 years, somewhere down the line he never quite figured out how to keep his own personal life in check. This is reflected well off of
American Lesion's lyrical content; no longer does Graffin choose to portray himself as Bad Religion's deadpan motor-mouth who will talk you into a corner if you so much as cross him, rather, he mellows out and bravely approaches the concepts of romance with naivety, humbleness, innocence and overall weakness. In other words, this truly is
Greg's record.
Continuing from the aforementioned opening track,
"No one ever told me 'bout the right way to love/And no one ever showed me what we're supposed to be made of", it's evident that Graffin is genuinely clueless to such intimate human concepts, and as such, incites a great deal of empathy within the listener, for whom can clearly tell of his conflicted nature during this newfound lapse of emptiness and despair, that goes much farther than any melancholy a politician could impact him with. What keeps this from veering into the territory of 'wangst' is A) Graffin's superb musicianship, multi-instrumentalism and surprisingly tight production, with his one-man-show drawing influence from American folk and heartland rock, and B) his use of language, the latter of which could not be farther removed from his acclaimed punk act. Gone is Greg's trademark peculiar use of metaphor in favour of a more direct and hyperbolic expression of his conscience, that ultimately leaves just as much of a mark on the listener.
Where
American Lesion falters somewhat is in consistency. Halfway into the album, a point occurs where Graffin chooses to cover one of his own songs 'Cease', previously found on Bad Religion's
The Gray Race, in the form of a mournful piano ballad. While the elegant instrumentation and gorgeous vocal work on the part of Graffin is surely a treat for the ears, its songwriting, albeit moving, does not correlate whatsoever with his primary concern for loneliness, and comes off as more of an intermission that is used to hammer into the audience that this man is, indeed, an acclaimed punk rocker, and the juxtaposition in styles must be temporarily brought to the forefront. Furthermore, following this point, the record zig-zags in regards to tone, as the remaining four tracks struggle to find a balance between wretched melancholy and anthems of hope. One could possibly argue that the unevenness is a representation of Greg's mental state, but at the end of the day, it simply distracts from the topic and language at hand, even THAT of which can occasionally get a bit run-of-the-mill at times ("
One day my life will be a chocolate shake and late night T.V/But right now I'm afraid of everything that is goin' down")
American Lesion's presence within the Bad Religion discography is a shame really, considering the only people that will inevitably listen to it are fans of the band, who will take one whiff of the opener track and cast it aside, having deduced that this is not the fast-paced, riff-laden rambling of politics that they were hoping to find from the very frontman who spouts said rambles. Indeed, while Greg Graffin's first solo affair may be too much of a highly personal and softer presentation for punk fans to handle at first glance, the content and ideas that Graffin brings to the table not only bring into fruition the true colours of him as a person beneath the cynical persona of his previous work, but also his versatility as a musician to embark on such an ambitious project, and at a time of such despair no less.
