Track Listing

1. American Gothic
2. Love's Enough
3. Ballad Of The Ship Of State
4. One Night Stand
5. Oh California
6. Another Friday Night
7. Family Band
8. Midnight Carousel
9. Waiting For The Moving Van
10. Blues For Billy Whitecloud
11. Montana Song

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #252882 in Music
• Released on: 2000-09-04
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

One of the few albums that can make me cry...
In 1972 my college roommate at Berkeley introduced me to a new LP called "American Gothic" by David Ackles. He thought I would like it. The roommate is long forgotten but for almost 30 years I have loved this mostly unknown little gem of an album. I wore out several LPs, then taped it onto a cassette. The final song of the album - "Montana Song" - has the distinction of being one of the very few songs that can make me weep. Ackles died last year, all too young, but this album has been recently re-released on CD, and is well worth acquiring. It's a lovely blend of the lyrical, romantic, cynical, melancholy and sweet, and I can't recommend it enough.

An Unfortunately Underappreciated Classic
This is a fascinating album worth many listenings, expecting potentially different voyages each time you do. Released in 1972, and produced by Bernie Taupin -long time lyricist of Elton John's best songs- unfortunately never received the wide popular acclaim that it rightfully deserved.
Already on this page, people have made valuable parallels with other bands, singers and genres you are likely to be much more familiar with. Let me add my own sense in situating this music in a larger context.

For me it's impossible not to be reminded of the best Broadway musical tradition in thinking of this album -think Sondheim more than Rogers & Hammerstein though- with its intelligent lyrics and musical arrangements. This is the case in the dramatic opening song, "American Gothic," as well as "Ballad Of The Ship Of State," the Gospel-like "Family Band" or the beautiful closer "Montana."
In the other hand, you may think of Jimmy Webb's work, another stunning sognwriter, in songs that count among my favorite such as "Love's Enough," "One Night Stand" and "Waiting For The Moving Van." All three gorgeous love ballads, each on its own way, with the latter being, possibly, the most heart-breaking one alltogether.
All in all, this is an album to own, appreciate, travel with and within it, and cherish whatever truths it might choose to tell you.

brilliant and tough to pigeonhole
No wonder people scratched their heads over this one. Ackles' musical sources are mostly non-rock/pop - Jacques Brel, Brecht-Weill, Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, while lyric-wise he travels the same American-grotesque territory already mapped by Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe. And it's GREAT - moving, funny, creepy, inspiring, haunting. And very American in its concerns, its cranky individualism, and its insistence on plundering good ideas wherever they may be found.