With every movement of American Standard, Uniform peels off a new layer and tells the story inside of the one that came before it. It’s Uniform’s most intimate work to date, tackling themes of self-destruction with a particular focus on vocalist Michael Berdan‘s lifelong struggle with bulimia nervosa. His lyrics sink down into the core of the innermost self, the small human being crushed in the grip of sickness. His bandmates join him, applying majestic droning that becomes both mechanical and omniscient. As the rhythms continually pulverize, Uniform gives themselves over to the grinding gears of an uncaring universe.
The thematic content behind American Standard can be divided down the middle into two distinct sections. While the A-side of the record deals with an individual who exists in a purgatorial state of physical and psychic crisis, the B-side serves to address how a lifetime of dealing with an eating disorder has impacted those around him.
American Standard begins with a shock. A voice, a room, a face in a mirror. In the mirror stares a visage, doubled and staring back. Each line comes back to him: reflected and refracted in the unsympathetic glass. Forget for a moment that Berdan has been destroying his throat in Uniform for over a decade. Forget his highly stylised delivery on the band’s acclaimed collaborative work (alongside experimental doom titans The Body and Japanese heavy rock powerhouse Boris). Forget the entire tradition of abrasive vocals in aggressive music. Look for what’s underneath the songs, the form, and the style.
To help peel away this narrative of eating disorders, self-hatred, delusion, mania, and ultimate discovery, Berdan sought assistance from a towering pair of outsider literary figures. Alongside B.R. Yeager (author of the modern cult-classic Negative Space) and Maggie Siebert (the mind behind the contemporary body horror masterpiece Bonding), the three writers eviscerate the personal material to present a portrait of mental and physical illness as vividly terrifying as anything in the present-day canon. The result is an acute articulation of a state beyond simple agony, capturing the thrilling transcendence and deliverance that sickness can bring in the process.
American Standard is surely Uniform’s most thematically accomplished and musically self assured album to date. Sections spiral and explode. Motifs drift off into obscurity before reasserting themselves with new power. Genres collide and burst open, forming something idiosyncratic and new. There’s a grandeur, due in part to the addition of Interpol bassist Brad Truax alongside the percussive push and pull of returning drummer Michael Sharp and longtime touring drummer Michael Blume, marking his Uniform recorded debut here. However, this magnificence is most clearly attributable to the scale and power of guitarist and founder Ben Greenberg’s arrangements, matching ever elegantly to the intense lyrical subject matter.
Underneath it all, what remains is trust. A record of this range and depth, a piece of art so far out on a ledge, can only be attempted with an extreme and almost foolish amount of understanding between collaborators. American Standard stands firmly on the bedrock that Uniform’s two original members, Michael Berdan and Ben Greenberg, have been building on for over a decade.
In Greenberg’s words, “When we started this record, Berdan told me: ‘I trust you to come up with a solid foundation for this, however you envision this thing. I want you to realize it completely, because I believe in you.’ So I wanted to write something overwhelming and all-encompassing for Berdan to lead his narrative through… because I trust and believe in him.” For an album to defy simple genre exercises and become a work of art, the musicians behind it must push themselves so far beyond the frayed ends of an established comfort zone that they might never return. Without a shred of doubt, American Standard is a work of art, agonising in its honesty and relentless in its pursuit of sonic transcendence. It is hideous. It is beautiful. It is necessary.
Uniform Live Dates:
Aug 30: New York City, NY – Bowery Ballroom (Record Release Show) !
Sep 03: Landers, CA – Giant Rock
Sep 04: Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon #
Sep 05: San Francisco, CA – Thee Parkside #
Sep 06: Eugene, OR – John Henry’s #
Sep 07: Seattle, WA – Black Lodge #
Sep 08: Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios #
Sep 09: Vancouver, BC – The Pearl #
Sep 10: Tacoma, WA – Elks Temple #
Oct 01: Manchester, UK – The White Hotel %
Oct 02: Newcastle, UK – The Lubber Fiend %
Oct 03: London, UK – Rich Mix %
Oct 04: Brussels, BE – Botanique %
Oct 05: Haarlem, NL – Patronaat %
Oct 06: Utrecht, NL – De Helling %
Oct 08: Hamburg, DE – Hefenklang %
Oct 09: Berlin, DE – Zukunft %
Oct 10: Warsaw, PL – Hybrydy $
Oct 11: Poznam, PL – 2Progi $
Oct 12: Prague, CZ – Underdogs %
Oct 13: Wien, AT – Chelsea %
Oct 15: Zagreb, HR – Mocvara %
Oct 16: Manchester, UK – TPO ^
Oct 17: Milano, IT – ARCI Bellezza ^
Oct 18: Fribourg, CH – Cafe XXe %
Oct 19: Paris, FR – La Java %
Dec 03: Washington, DC – DC9 ~
Dec 04: Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s ~
Dec 05: Boston, MA – The Armory ~
Dec 06: Montréal, QC – Cabaret Foufounes ~
Dec 07: Toronto, ON – Monarch Tavern ~
Dec 08: Detroit, MI – Small’s ~
Dec 10: Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle ~
Dec 11: Columbus, OH – Ace of Cups ~
Dec 13: Richmond, VA – The Warehouse ~
Dec 14: Bethlehem, PA – National Sokols ~
% w/ Bad Breeding
$ – w/ Bad Breeding and A Place To Bury Strangers
^ – w/ Bad Breeding and The Body & Dis Fig
! w/ Poison Ruin and LEYA
# w/ World Peace
~ w/ Pharmakon and True Body
