Press Clips
Brent Burton, 2020:
Pushing against the constraints of Fin de Siècle indie rock, DC’s American Workplace approached the new century with an open mind and a recombinant spirit. The quartet’s summer of 2000 debut captures a core group—Jon Carson, Dan Dresser, Eric Bruns, and Patrick Mucklow—restlessly experimenting with rhythm and instrumentation. Though melancholic post-punk is the band’s lingua franca, The American Workplace—which also happens to be the group’s only document—exhibits fluency in several other languages of the 20th century American underground: free jazz, minimalism, country, electronica, and noise. The American Workplace was aided in its endeavors by friends and neighbors who dropped by to add violin, Theremin, horns, vibes, and keyboards—augmentations that function like organic byproducts, or rather echoes, of the songwriting process. Speaking of which, yes, these are songs. Granted, the elasticity of the Bruns-and-Mucklow rhythm section makes many of these tunes, once existing as Carson and Dresser demos, feel more like soundscapes than traditional verse-chorus-verse exercises. But the album is really, at its heart, a still-shiny example of how far the rock song can be stretched and still retain its form.
John Davis, Held Like Sound, 2001:
Profoundly pretty pop songs tortured into an indelible debut.
Mark Jenkins, NPR "All Things Considered", 2001:
The style known as "chamber-rock" goes back to the Beatles' experiments in the recording studio - - supplementing their sound with wind-instrument solos and string quartets. Those arrangements are an important precedent for the Washington band called the American Workplace. But, as critic Mark Jenkins explains, on their new self-titled album, the band also draws on an edgier tradition.
The members of The American Workplace use the traditional rock instruments: guitar, bass, and drums (although singer/bassist Eric Bruns also plays clarinet). But the songs on the band’s self-titled debut are designed to be augmented by a half dozen musicians who add keyboards, french horn, electronics, and violin.
That’s “Wanted: Cook and Dishwasher,” the quiet instrumental that ends the album. It’s minimalism is typical of The American Workplace, but in other ways the track is uncharacteristic. Most of the band’s music recalls the jumpy and self-conscious style known as “post-punk.” The opening song, “Your Math is Killing Me,” sounds like Talking Heads before they got funky, and especially like the first album by Australian cult favorites The Go-Betweens.
Two of the members, singer/guitarists Jonathan Carson and Daniel Dresser, used to play in the D.C. band called Free Range Pilgrim that showed many of the same influences. But unlike that predecessor, The American Workplace has a bare bones, almost haunted sound that suggests an art school update of the Delta Blues.
Even at its most lyrical, The American Workplace’s music is tightly wound. Songs like “From the Perspective of the Agent’s Lover” feature long instrumental passages. But there’s always an underlying tension. The staccato notes of the electric guitar may yield to the sustaining tones of the violin, but the uneasiness lingers. This is chamber music for a very uptight garden party.
Eric Bensel, MAGNET, 2001:
Whatever happened to the goddamn guitar riff? You tap your toes, you bang your head, you high-five your roommate. It’s that simple.
Like many others before it, The American Workplace downplays the repetition of riffage and dabbles instead in guitar deconstruction. But this quartet, featuring former members of Free Range Pilgrim, tempers its experiments with some nice accents. The deconstruction is decidedly more palatable, beautiful even, when accompanied by Jean Cook’s violin, Finn McCool’s French horn and Lary Hoffman’s vibraphone.
Lesser (or perhaps “artier”) bands will forgo structure where The American Workplace will ease the listener into safer, more familiar territory. There are “songs” on this self-titled debut, loosely bound, light-weighted tunes with a somewhat central theme – or, at least, a semblance of a theme. The album isn’t unlistenable skronk, nor is it filled with catchy ditties. Opening track “Your Math is Killing Me” feels as if it’s going to bust out into a D.C.-punk scorcher but dissolves into a soft, disheveled ramble. While “Prose of Impossible Beauty, Pt I” is a difficult listen, “From the Perspective of the Agent’s Lover” floats along with certain easy elegance.
The trick here is to allow your ears to absorb the delicate sounds. Once digested, the tunes have a way of feeling natural.