American Pyramid [CD]

Graham Hunt can't stop making records. Since 2019, the Madison, WI-based songwriter has been amassing a dense catalog of singular music at a pace rivaled only by the quality of the output itself. Now already on his sixth album, American Pyramid, Hunt pushed himself out of his comfort zones, eschewing the home-spun, computer-oriented explorations of his previous work and instead entering Minnesota's legendary Pachyderm Studio with an nine-piece band to try and capture a different side of his boundless creativity. The result is an album that stretches out musically and lyrically, with Hunt using his surrealist spin to dissect both the traditions of American indie rock as well as the unnerving detachment of the American experience itself.Teaming up with a slew of multi-instrumentalists from previous iterations of his live performance, Graham decamped to Pachyderm Studio, the famous recording site of countless iconic albums, from Nirvana's In Utero and PJ Harvey's Rid of Me, to more recent records like Bully's Sugaregg or Beach House's Once Twice Melody. The session proved fruitful as most of the songs that made it onto American Pyramid exude the maximalist ambition that's apparent in Graham's masterful songwriting - but after heading home, Hunt was struck with even further inspiration - and the record relishes inthe duality of both processes. Tracks like the Pachyderm-recorded rave-up "Riverboat Blues" seamlessly segue into the home-recorded music like "Dust Underwater," both veering into escapist fantasies where vibrant production flourishes match the surreal storytelling. Or elsewhere, mid-album standout "Getting Older" offers some of Hunt's most instantly satisfying guitar pop and the most grounded lyrics on American Pyramid.The ability to straddle so many different sounds, emotions, and moods makes Graham Hunt such a special songwriter. Very few would even attempt to combine Westerberg-ian everyman rock with gonzo autotuned vocal runs, or psychedelic lyrical abstractions with heart-on-sleeve musings about the relentless march of time-and fewer still could pull it off like Hunt does throughout American Pyramid.