The Man from Another Time tackles modern-day America with hope and fury.
Veteran producer and singer-songwriter Seasick Steve requires no real introduction. A journeying musician for over five decades, a producer for bands like Modest Mouse and an established name on the scene since his 2006 breakthrough at Jools Holland’s Hootenanny, which brought him worldwide fame, Steve has been steadily releasing record after record. His last release was 2024’s A Trip A Stumble A Fall Down On Your Knees.
This year, the man who is consistently billed as someone out of a distant past, a long-bearded, denim-covered, train-hopping heartland past, has his sights steadily aimed at the present and the future with The Last Season of America. And while you might not have known exactly what to expect, on the eponymous opening track the indictment is clear:
“It’s the last season of America/And we’ll never watch again/The show that we loved/And there’ll be no reruns/All the sponsors have gone home/They’re shutting the whole thing down/All that’s left is the theme song.”
The tone is mournful, a foray into acoustic balladry that occasionally stumbles over its own words, but it shows that though he’s been away from the US for quite a long time since a move to Norway in 2001, Steve is still watching the show back home, and he doesn’t like what he’s seeing. The album’s second track, Bad Things, kicks things into overdrive with backwards guitar solos and a funky rhythm guitar, but if you had any doubts about just what it is that Steve doesn’t like about modern-day America, well, this should make it clear:
“we got a criminal/running this place/he got lies/written all over his face/all he wants/is just to divide/he don’t care /if our country live or die/ as long as the money keeps rolling/up to the rich /a keep rolling/without a hitch/i’m gonna sing/bad things”
The tracklist then swerves into more familiar territory: if you were expecting makeshift-guitar rompers, then you bet you’ll get them. Above Ground Boogie is a slow-building, fuzz-drenched, bad-to-the-core paean to life: “Another day above ground and it’s good“; and yes it is, Steve. It’s good.
But there’s more acoustic material, a foray into surf rock with Surf’s Flat, the hellraising Somebody, and the last track of the album, Feel the Sun, which puts Steve’s previous harangues into perspective to the tune of a hard-to-resist riff: “we got the power/to change the writing/yeah on the wall/it’s in our hands/yeah whether evil/gonna rise or fall/so don’t lose your faith/it is the night/but the dawn gonna come” From someone whose mysterious background points to a life lived at just about every level, these are words to remember.
All in all, a range of styles and emotions in an album that heralds a death that’s only a new beginning; a night that’s at its darkest just before a new and better dawn.
