There is an appealingly ramshackle quality to ‘American Pyramid’ that brings to mind Personal Trainer and early Pavement. It marks a whole new approach for Graham Hunt. His previous five albums have been homespun, computer-oriented explorations but having moved out of the house that contained his home studio, he chose to record at Minnesota’s Pachyderm Studio with an eight-piece band of multi-instrumentalists. To emphasise the live process, he avoided demoing the songs on the computer, just bringing chords and melody, thus allowing the magic of creation in the studio to take effect. What emerges is a record that has freshness and a sprawling quality even though the 12 songs have a brevity to them with the whole album lasting a mere 34 minutes.
As opening track, ‘Straight Line to Love’ illustrates, there is plenty compressed into a short space. Starting with hi-hat and organ, twelve-string guitar followed by bass join the fray before Hunt’s voice. What becomes clear from the title line is that he has an impressive way with a hook. The imagery is on the surreal side (alcoholic air, a slurring priestess, watching does and rows of rats) but it hints at the album’s overarching theme – the structural isolation of American life, irrespective of whether you are surrounded by people.
Upping the tempo, the two-minute breathless folk-punk rush of ‘Waiting for You to Come Home’ throws in some piano embellishments and captures the daily struggle for survival and the difference between what people do for money and for fulfilment in the lines, “drugs will help us do our jobs / and when we’re off we’ll do some work.” Within ‘Guardian Angel’s Arms’ there are shifts from laidback slacker rock with bursts of 12-string guitar to full out impassioned vocals as he sings of “prying your head from the serpent’s jaw.” From its electro beginnings, ‘Riverboat Blues’ quickly builds a big guitar groove interspersed with piano melodies that is musically buoyant while painting a bleak picture of climate breakdown (“I wanna see New Orleans before it washes away.”)
Not everything on ‘American Pyramid’ is a success. ‘Song of Hate’ starts off as a choppy punk-funk song, throws in the album’s first use of auto-tuned vocals and tops it off with an ugly guitar break. Admittedly, anything resembling a rock style guitar solo is my number one musical pet hate but the only positive thing I can say about the solo is that it lasts no more than 20 seconds.
Fortunately, the mood immediately changes with the piano-led, slow-burner ‘Places that are Gone’ which creates an emotive picture of dereliction and detritus. Even though a guitar break appears at the end, it is sufficiently warped and wonky to avoid consignment to the retirement home for rock cliches. One of three home recorded tracks, ‘Dust Underwater’ fits guitar shards with loose, angular rhythms while the use of auto-tune on a few lines works effectively. The choice of when to employ auto-tune does not follow any immediately identifiable pattern. It reappears on the rock-leaning ‘4 Hour Shift’ for a few lines and while it does shift the mood, it does feel more like it is being used as a toy that is available rather than adding to the song,
‘Getting Older’ is the most straightforward song on ‘American Pyramid’, an indie rock piece with a compelling hook while the lyrics offer a sympathetic portrait of precarious existence. The 62-second long ‘Thank You Mother Squirrel’ is as delightfully bonkers as its title and the reference to “Shane MacGowan’s teeth veneers, RIP” would suggest while having a beguilingly wayward energy and melody. ‘Big Light’ is even stranger. Starting off with a looping fairground melody, it adds melodica prominently as well as recorder and Irish tin whistle to the mix while throwing in references to Dionysus, Gaddafi and Hiawatha yet it still retains a pop edge.
‘American Pyramid’ ends with by far its longest track, the five-minute ‘You Always Have the Morning’ which uses its extra running time to combine Butthole Surfers-style weirdness and discordance, heartland rock choruses, and a locked groove ending incorporating what could be the imaginary theme tune to a Black Beauty-like TV show. Its ridiculousness merging with accessible tunes within it neatly summarises the record.
While ‘American Pyramid’ is far from a perfect album, it sounds like a huge amount of fun to make with the band free to indulge their ideas. Within the hive of creativity, they rarely lose sight of the overwhelming priority of creating memorable songs.
Graham Hunt: American Pyramid – Out 28 August 2026 (Run For Cover Records)
Hunt – “Riverboat Blues” (Official Music Video)
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
