Boombox Blitz: Drunken Logic suffers brutality of being ‘Alone in America’

Welcome to Boombox Blitz, an artist spotlight series showcasing overlooked singers, songwriters and musicians who are quietly taking over the world.

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,” preached prolific author and activist Maya Angelou. In her lifetime, she instructed the human race on how to live, fully and freely, and her teachings have never been more crucial to our survival than in 2018. On both a personal and universal level, such knowledge serves to remind us that humanity has a pulse and isn’t always so severely and violently cold. Jake Cassman, known onstage as Drunken Logic, a discerning and joyously distressed tunesmith out of Los Angeles, dresses up his single “Alone in America” with a tense and earnest music video, drenched in satirical overtones.

“Alone in America, forever surrounded by herself / It’s painfully that this is just who she has always been,” Cassman sings, rolling hills of rock ‘n roll sweeping away from him. It’s a suitable opener for a visual that boldly encapsulates the “echo chamber of white males in our country,” he says. “There is violence in this video, and in light of recent events, some of the content may be disturbing to some. It is not our intention to offend. But I think it’s important to address the current vicious cycle of political violence, divisive rhetoric and polarizing media coverage ⏤ and to do it through the power of music and humor.”

The rather sterile visual, directed by Jacob T. Emery, inhabits that uncomfortable space of unwavering and toxic conservatism that aims only to cause ever-widening rifts between the left and right. It is jarringly raw, particularly in fictionalized adaptations of popular news programs, as it stages a conference meeting, in which a roundtable of white faces audition various candidates as their makeshift mascot. “I want to encourage more people to advocate peacefully for what they believe and to speak for themselves, no matter what they have to say,” continues Cassman, whose looming vocal presence tightens the message to great effect. “One of the most significant problems in American politics is the lack of participation. And I want anyone who watches or listens to our work to feel as deeply as I do that it is their duty to make themselves heard and to hear the people around them, as well.”

The song itself blasts from a musically dynamic place, shifting between brassy horn sections and smoldering classic rock structures. “I try to make music that you can rock to at the live show and think about in your headphones, and this might be the most successful attempt at that I’ve ever made,” Cassman explained to B-Sides & Badlands earlier this fall of the song’s high-stakes acrobatic routine. “We are always flawed and often feel broken, but that is who we have always been and will always be. And that shouldn’t stop you from trying to make the world a better place, no matter how difficult and scary that effort might be.”

“Alone in America” is ripped from Cassman’s latest album, The Loudness Wards, which includes other such aptly-titled songs as “Gaslight District” and “White Noise.”

Watch below:

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