Chris Pierce would have been happy if this album had never been recorded. Perhaps more accurately, he would be very happy if the racism and the social injustices that he sings in protest against, didn’t exist. I’m sure in a better world, he would prefer singing songs of love and togetherness, but sadly, that is not where we and America, in particular, are at this point in point in time.
Pierce has been shot at, stabbed, and thrown in jail for being of mixed race and standing up for what he believes in. It’s past time for others too to take a stance on these issues. Silence is compliance, was the old adage. Well, Pierce argues that to be silent now, when the evidence of racism is everywhere is worse than that. To fail to recognize, that it has a long history and stand up to it, is a crime. As Pierce sings on ‘It’s Been Burning For A While’:
Flames are rollin’ down the city, rolling for a mile. How it get so bad you ask? It’s been burnin’ for a while. You say it’s in the eye of the beholder, well I’ll just go and check. No, it ain’t no chip up on my shoulder, that’s your boot upon my neck.
Written in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis, it’s a call for action, not sympathy; a call for change, not apathy.
The songs cover issues as broad and as closely aligned as racism, oppression, homelessness, false imprisonments, Native American boarding schools, black identity, and a homage to civil rights leader John Lewis. It seeks a common ground for those disenfranchised groups and seeks a positive march forward.
Pierce’s voice is strong and resonant throughout, backed only by guitar and harmonica. The stripped-back instrumentation, adding to the strength of the lyrics, not diminishing them. Some have compared him to Otis Redding, and there are similarities.
There is a rawness to his voice, without the rounded velvet edges of Otis. Yet that only adds to the honesty of the songs, to the conviction he carries, and the authenticity of the struggle. There is a real passion here. On ‘How Can Anybody Be Okay With This’, Pierce sings of an indignation that so little change has happened over time:
I’m sick and tired of singing this song. We’ve been singing it too long. Singing we shall overcome someday.
Comparisons have also been drawn to the 60s protest songs of Dylan, and the work of Richie Havens, and I’m sure Chris Pierce will take those compliments. But he has a style and a voice all his own, although hopefully, it is a voice not on its own.
If you like your music soulful, committed, impassioned, and true, ‘American Silence’ will resonate with you.
‘American Silence’ deserves to be heard.