Artist: America
Album: Heritage II
Label: Omnivore Recordings
Release Date: 4.18.2020
The transformation was remarkable. What started out in 1970 as a light folky trio “sitting around on stools and working out our songs”—as Gerry Buckley writes in the brief liner notes, graduated in just a few short years to become vastly underrated masters of pop sophistication.
That tends to happen anytime Sir George Martin is hanging around. America’s move from simply singing breezy harmonies and strumming its acoustic guitars like the wind to fame is demonstrated in the new odds-and-sods collection Heritage II: Demos/Alternate Takes 1971-1976. Ceding production duties to the famed Beatles co-conspirator for 1974’s Holiday, after initially producing themselves, America needed a guide to lead them to a new promised land, where artistic growth mattered as much as commercial success. The successor to 2017’s Heritage: Home Recordings/Demos 1970-1973, this latest volume of archival ephemera from America leans heavily on the Martin era, with a smattering of alternative mixes that are actually improvements from what ended up on the albums. Take “Amber Cascades” and “Today’s the Day,” both originally from 1976’s Hideway, the former echoing “Ventura Highway” and benefitting from more reverb and an organic, back-to-basics urgency, while the rolling piano of the latter shuffles off the heavy cloak of the sluggish LP version, picking up the pace and drinking in a stronger brew of richer, velvety sound. The same could be said of “Jet Boy Blue,” from the same record, as the alternate mix on Heritage II: Demos/Alternate Takes 1971-1976 races forward with an infectious head of steam.
Not surprisingly, the influence of The Beatles was strongly felt on the Martin-helmed Holiday, 1975’s Hearts and Hideaway, as the Tin Pan Alley character of Holiday’s “Mad Dog,” with its euphoric mix of horns and woodwinds, took its cues from the Paul McCartney-penned “When I’m 64” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” The demo rendering of “Mad Dog” included here is softer and darker, still jaunty and upbeat but more wistfully nostalgic than the LP version. Originally tacked on to the Japanese CD of Hearts as an afterthought, the alternate mix of Dan Peek’s “Simple Life” appears as a fully realized pop swoon, particularly when tumbling piano rushes in. McCartney is a ghost in the machinery of America.
Traces of America’s original formula can be found in a rough, yet utterly compelling, demo of “Cornwall Blank,” with a bit of in-studio conversation providing a fascinating look behind the curtain. Occasional instances of such talking are scattered throughout, but the real treasures on Heritage II: Demos/Alternate Takes 1971-1976 are the wild 13-minute acoustic instrumental “Jameroony,” a fun 1971 rarity with plenty of unexpected twists and turns, and Gerry Beckley’s unreleased gem “Mandy,” the demo form of which starts out lonesome and spare like something from Neil Young’s After The Goldrush and blossoms with full-on orchestral ambition. These vault-emptying releases from are essential, and not just for America completists. They reveal the trio of Peek, Beckley and Dewey Bunnell as artistically restless, willing to risk everything to embrace more complex arrangements and instrumentation. Listen to this set’s track mix of “Tin Man,” stripped of lead vocals, and marvel at its jazzy piano tinkling and lovely blending of voices, or get lost in the sumptuous strings and vocals of an elegant excerpt of “You.” America the beautiful, indeed.
—Peter Lindblad
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