Rostam blends Americana and Persian roots on American Stories

Rostam releases American Stories on 15 May through Matsor Projects and Secretly Distribution, and the album sounds like a deliberate attempt to complicate what American music can mean. Rostam Batmanglij has always been known as a producer and arranger with an unusually wide musical vocabulary, from his work with Vampire Weekend to albums with Clairo, Haim and others.

Here, he pulls his Persian heritage closer to the center of his solo songwriting, placing microtonal saz melodies, violin, acoustic guitar, piano and careful pop architecture against one another. The result is not simple fusion. It is music interested in friction: Iranian melodic language rubbing against Western guitar chords, private memory rubbing against national symbolism, beauty rubbing against political unease.

The album includes Hardy with Clairo, reconnecting Rostam with one of his most important collaborators after producing her debut album Immunity. Tracks such as Like a Spark, Back of a Truck, Forgive Is To Know, Come Apart and The Weight suggest a record built around movement, identity and the strange emotional charge of belonging to more than one cultural story at once. For indie-pop and art-pop readers, American Stories is one of the major 15 May releases because it treats personal history as sound design, not just lyrical subject matter. Source: https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/news/rostam-recruits-clairo-for-new-album-american-stories-shares-lead-single-like-a-spark ; Review: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/rostam-american-stories