American Standard - Green Vinyl

Description

With each movement of American Standard, Uniform peels away a new layer and tells the story within the one that preceded it. The lyrics delve into the heart of the most intimate self, the little human being crushed by illness. To help unpack this narrative of eating disorders, self-hatred, illusions, obsessions, and ultimate discoveries, Michael Berdan enlisted the help of a pair of prominent outside literary figures. Alongside B.R. Yeager (author of the modern classic Negative Space) and Maggie Siebert (creator of the contemporary body horror masterpiece Bonding), the three writers dissect the personal narrative to present a portrait of mental and physical illness as vivid and terrifying as anything that exists today in the field. American Standard is certainly Uniform's most thematically accomplished and musically confident album to date. There is a certain grandeur, partly due to the addition of Interpol bassist Brad Truax, alongside the drumming of returning drummer Michael Sharp and long-time touring drummer Michael Bloom, who makes his recording debut with Uniform here. However, this magnificence is more clearly attributable to the scope and power of the arrangements by guitarist and founder Ben Greenberg, which always elegantly align with the intense subject of the lyrics. For fans of The Body, Pharmakon, Sightless Pit, Thou, Street Sects, Full of Hell, Primitive Man.