The American Analog Set - The Golden Band (1999), Know By Heart (2001), Updates (2001)

Bought in Reading HMV in 2005

Here is another band that I am going to talk about as a whole, rather than do a separate piece for each record. This is in part another reflection of my CD buying behaviour, in that I bought these CDs in quick succession. It is also a reflection on the band’s musical style. You could play me a song from any of these CDs and I would not be able to tell you which it came from. That is not a criticism of the music, but my attempt to articulate that the American Analog Set have a singular sound that need not be adjusted. You know what you’re going to get.

I was first made aware of ‘AmAnSet’ by my friend Andrew in 2003-2004, when we lived in the same house. He had bought their latest record Promise of Love (2003). In particular, it was opening track ‘Continuous Hit Music’ that Andy wished to play to me. There are other great songs on there, like ‘Come Home Baby Julie, Come Home’, but it was that opener that struck me.

It must’ve struck Andy too, because he started making music that was more than a little indebted to it. He, our other housemates and I started joking around about forming a band. Had things gone another way, we might’ve ended up playing acoustic music with brushed drum beats going at a decent mid-tempo lick, with some woozy keys draped over the top. It didn’t turn out that way at all, but there was something of AmAnSet in that band that I could hear, even if no one else could.

By June 2004 I was working at HMV in Reading. Promise of Love was never in the racks, but other albums of theirs were. I started collecting them them, getting the final one, Updates, soon after 16th November 2005 (it still has my customer order sticker on the front).

Not long before that I bought Andy a birthday present, 2005’s Set Free. Since then the band seem to have been what is invariably called an indefinite hiatus. If only bands like this could carry on. Too many bands reform these days, and it’s never the right ones.

Andrew Kenny, founding member of American Analog Set, has also contributed to Broken Social Scene, and has another band called the Wooden Birds. I know next to nothing about either of them.