Read Come Un Killer Sotto Il Sole’s review of Thom Chacon’s “Blood In The USA” below. For the original Italian version of the review click here.
The exterminated rural undergrowth of the United States often produces artists of great caliber, which however remain the exclusive prerogative of a small circle of enthusiasts. Thom Chacon would have probably been destined, if there had not been Appaloosa Records, a musical ferry between the States and our country, that has distributed on the national territory Blood In The Usa, the second songwriter’s work coming from Colorado.
A perfect choice as this record will make the happiness of those who love his most classic American. Chacon, in fact, aligns with the great tradition of the border singer-songwriters (on everyone comes to mind Ryan Bingham and Joe Ely), as it is obvious that among his cultural and stylistic references Bob Dylan, John Prine, Johnny Cash ( especially that of the American Recordings) and the Springsteen of Nebraska.
Blood In The USA is a collection of dusty, raw, direct songs intertwined with the crude rope of minimal but solid arrangements, to which the hoarseness crooner of the beautiful voice of Chacon attributes an aura of epicity.
Certainly not the epic of great spaces, of wild nature or of adventures on the road, just to mention the most obvious traditional iconography on the States; Instead, Chacon recounts a more current America, wounded and suffering, America of the dispossessed, the unemployed and immigrants, a country where life walks on the border of despair, when you have to make ends meet by hoeing fields or sweating in front of a chain by Assembly.
Raw and sad texts, in which the existences of the protagonists are devoured by “a rust that never sleeps” and hope only surfaces at times, like the last ballad Big As The Moon , which evokes a love capable of soothing the sufferings of life (” You have a heart as big as the moon, you have a light that kills all the sadness “). It is only one episode, however, in a string of direct and intense songs,