Band:	The American Dollar
Album:	The American Dollar
Style:	Electro rock
Release date:	2007
A review by:	Undercraft

01. War On Christmas
02. Glow
03. Cambian
04. Somnambulance
05. Long March
06. Separate But Equal
07. Peterson
08. Thompson
09. Twelve Days Awake
10. Everyone Gets Shot

Usually I never go for the ugly-covered albums, but I don't know what drove me to give this album a try, I mean, not even the band name is good. So at first sight is an album with poor cover art and a non-so-attractive band name. That is a bad start.

But luckily for these guys I'm more interested in the music rather than the artistic aspects of the band, and luckily for me, The American Dollar produces damn fine music.
The American Dollar plays Post-Rock with some electronic influences, although minimum and only to spice up the music, is not like the electronics are taking the lead here. The whole album is instrumental, and it contains some ambient tracks as well, like a perfect transition between one song and another.

The first song "War On Christmas" is an awesome piece that starts out with soft pace and some electro backgrounds, soon the drums make their apparition and the song reaches new heights, and that's the modus operandi of The American Dollar -and Post-Rock as well-, the bipolarity of the music, the contrast of the calm parts with the crescendo of the harder ones.

The real protagonists here are the keyboards and the drums, whether is a piano or an exquisite Hammond organ, the keyboards adds so much atmosphere and depth to the music. Songs like "Somnambulance", "Twelve Days Awake" and "Glow" are the living proof of that. The harder parts are filled with heavy drumming and some layers of distortion/noise quite typical in the genre.

In a nutshell, this might be one of those albums that doesn't look so good, but fear not, it sounds amazing. Another good reason to start listening Post-Rock you blood-thirsty sword-wielding corpse-painted metallers.