American Aquarium have announced their new album ‘The Fear of Standing Still’ which is due out 26th July 2024 via Losing Side Records/Thirty Tigers. “For us the sweet spot is when you’ve got a rock band that makes you scream along to every word, and it’s not until you’re coming down at three a.m. that you realise those words are saying something real about your life,” says frontman BJ Barham. “That’s what made us fall in love with music in the first place, and that’s the goal in everything we do.”
For nearly two decades, American Aquarium have pushed toward that their own form of rock-and-roll and on ‘The Fear of Standing Still’, the band embody that with more intensity, matching their gritty breed of country-rock with Barham’s honest songwriting, as he reflects on both the personal and cultural—eg: the complexity of Southern identity, the intersection of generational trauma and the dismantling of reproductive rights.
Recorded live at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, ‘The Fear of Standing Still’ marks American Aquarium’s second outing with producer Shooter Jennings. In a departure from the stripped-down ‘Chicamacomico’ (2022), the band’s tenth studio release delivers explosive riffs and hard-charging rhythms. “In our live show the band’s like a freight train that never lets up, and for this record I really wanted to showcase how big and anthemic we can be,” notes Barham.
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‘The Fear of Standing Still ‘kicks offs with ‘Crier’, a ferocious track that swiftly obliterates worn-out ideals of masculine behaviour. “It’s a song about breaking down what many of us learned from our fathers growing up—this idea that boys don’t cry, or that crying is a form of weakness,” says Barham, who co-wrote ‘Crier’ with singer/songwriter Stephen Wilson Jr. “I wanted to send the message that it’s not natural to bottle everything up inside, because all of us are meant to feel.”
