Essentials: The Top Ten American Aquarium Songs

I am a huge fan of American Aquarium’s muscular alt-country with its great tunes and often anthemic choruses. They put the country into their alt-country with a liberal dose of wonderful pedal steel, which is never a bad thing. But if this wasn’t enough, the blue-collar, southern state words of their singer, BJ Barham, are compelling. There are many tales of his hometown and upbringing, his struggles with alcohol and of the women he has met along life’s path. These are often infused with a southern gothic sadness and darkness that you might find elsewhere in the novels of Tennessee Williams or the music of Gram Parsons, for example.

I was lucky enough to see a barnstorming performance by them at the Brudenell in Leeds in 2023. The highly charismatic Barham, playing his acoustic guitar like a machine gun, gave it all he had got and then a little bit more, just to be on the safe side, and was a fabulous focal point for the band. His words between songs- at one point he talked movingly about his mother- were gripping.

Barham, from Raleigh in North Carolina, started the band in 2006 while at university. He subsequently dropped out and decided to try for a career in music, to some disappointment from his parents, as he was the first in his family to go to university (He says that they came around to the idea after a while). The band’s name comes from the opening line in Wilco’s ‘I Am Trying To Break Your Heart’ from “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”: “I am an American aquarium drinker/ I assassin down the avenue”. The band has produced 12 albums, starting with “Antique Hearts” in 2006 and ending with their latest, very well-regarded album, 2024’s “The Fear Of Standing Still”. They have also an EP and two albums of country covers, “Slappers, Bangers and Certified Twangers” Volumes one and two, to their name.

There have been many changes of personnel in the band with Barham being the one constant, including the whole band giving up and going back to day jobs in 2017 and a whole new band needing to be recruited. They had got fed up with the lack of success, apparently. It was put to him in a 2018 AUK interview that it was all a bit like Mark E Smith and The Fall. He took this in good humour but later pointed out that, although he comes up with the words and the basic chords, the band members have a massive input into the final sound and arrangements. Without them, he would be a Bragg-esque folk singer standing up there on his own. You get the feeling after reading about the band of a real determination in Barham and of success gained after adversity.

It is a bit of a cliché, but it has been very difficult to choose the ten best songs amongst so many excellent tracks. Many of Barham’s lyrics are interesting and so I have tended to go for those with the best and most memorable tunes. On another day I could have chosen others.

Number 10: “All I Needed” (2022)

From the “Chicacomico” album, this gets in for its music rather than its words about the redemptive power of music, although when allied to the wonderful video here they are very moving. It has great melodies and I love the pedal steel.

Number 9: “Things Change” (2018)

The title track of the “Things Change” album is a mea culpa from Barham about the way he treated a woman close to him: “God knows that woman tried to make me better/ But I let her down/ And the fight was never fair/I took more than my share, and kept on taking”. He is never shy of discussing his failings- there is no bragging- and this makes his lyrics all the more listenable. The album, produced by John Fullbright, is excellent and is perhaps one a reader unfamiliar with American Aquarium might start with as an introduction to them. It came, perhaps unsurprisingly, at a time of great change for Barham. In the previous few years he had become sober, got married, had a daughter, lost a whole band and gained a new one. He has since said that he felt that the album was about perseverance through difficult times and hope for better things in the future.

Number 8: “The Road To Nowhere” (2008)

Here the boot is on the other foot with Barham’s voice cracking in despair as a lover walks out on him: ”And I told her I loved her and she told me she’s leaving/Just like every other person in my life that I’d believed in”. It is at a slower pace than many AA songs, with a yearning pedal steel that fits the desperation in the words perfectly. From their second album “The Bible And The Bottle”, which is not one of their more famous ones but is very well worth a listen.

Number 7: “Lonely Ain’t Easy” (2012)

Another gut-wrenching song, from the album “Burn. Flicker. Die”, about a traumatic break-up and the loneliness it leaves behind. Here fiddle is used as well as pedal steel to give a sense of the heartbreak. The album was produced by Barham’s great friend of many years, Jason Isbell. Both have had struggles with alcohol and both are now sober, Barham for over ten years, so not at the time of writing this song. His family has a tragic history of death from drug and alcohol addiction and here you can see parallels with the great Gram Parsons, although Barham’s family were not privileged in the same way.

Number 6: “Southern Sadness” (2015)

From the excellent “Wolves” album, a song about Barham trying to get away from his southern state hometown but never being quite able to break free from it completely, particularly the sense of melancholy there: “And there’s a southern sadness/That won’t let go of this heart of mine”.

Number 5: “City Lights” (2009)

A beautiful slower song from “Dances For The Lonely” which includes the title words in the lyrics. It is sung to a lover back at home while the singer is on tour but woven in is a sad short story of a typical hometown woman going to a bar looking for love but ending disappointed. He paints a dark picture of the city he is in: “And goddamn this city/ To hell with the cold dark night”.

Number 4: “Starts With You” (2020)

A rip-roaring song, more positive than most, with a great chant-along chorus. Here Barham admits that he is troubled: “But I’m the kind of guy that hits rock bottom/Laughs and asks you for a shovel” but has found a woman who he has fallen for. He seems at the moment to be happily married with a daughter so it is probably his now wife. From another excellent album, “Lamentations”.

Number 3: “Katherine Belle” (2009)

An absolute banger about a woman he met for a short while in Calgary. She sounds a bit of a character: “She comes busting through like a hurricane at midnight”. He wonders if she will be there when he comes back there again on tour. Another one from “Dances For The Lonely”. It is still part of their live set as shown by a video from this year.

Number 2: “Tough Folks” (2018)

A scorching song from “Things Change” about the troubles of the people of his home state: “When the only thing harder than the work is the luck”, bringing his family background of Carolina farmers into the lyrics. It all becomes political when he explains people voting for Trump in 2016 with the lines “And last November I saw firsthand/ What desperation makes good people do” Barham is not really party-political and says that his audience is split about 50/50 Republican /Democrat with the two sides relating to his music in different ways. He just wishes to understand what makes them vote the way they do. The video is good and gives a good idea of the energy of the band- it looks like it is set in a derelict stadium in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina.

Number 1: “World Is On Fire” (2018)

Barham started writing this memorable song in despair after Trump was elected in 2016, but it was the division and anger in the US that horrified him rather than being specifically anti-Trump. He then went back to the song after he had found out that his wife was expecting a baby girl and finished the song with a determination to fight for a better, more hopeful and less divided future. Another one from “Things Change”.