Chris Marksberry’s album is titled End Of The American Dream. Welcome back to the age of jive. With songs so diverse they raise questions not easily answered, even the title has multiple levels of meaning. First and most obviously, it’s his love letter to the golden age of American pop. His ‘Oh My Darling’ rips your heart out from your chest, then smoothly slips it back in again. His ‘A Train Called Destiny’ dances on a razor’s edge of Eagles-style slide guitar. But the album’s also an autobiographical trip into personal histories.

Chris was born in Columbus, Ohio but, following his Anglo-American parents’ divorce, his mother brought him back to England where he grew up wondering what his life would have been like if it had continued in America. “My mum really thought she was going to a better life with my dad; she thought she was going to something magical,” he says as he sits in his kitchen, glasses pushed back onto the top of his smoothly shaven head. “And it just imploded very quickly. For whatever reason, I don’t fully know. But that was the end of the American dream for our family, really; more hers than mine, but that’s where the title really resonates.”

There’s another interpretation. “America has always peddled the idea that there’s an American Dream, that it’s the land of the free, yet there’s always been a contradiction in that there’s the good bit of it, and the more conflicted part. Obviously, the timing with Trump and everything was not lost on me; it makes the album title quite poignant in some ways.” But more than anything, it’s the romance of American music. “Yeah, when I started writing the album it was, Okay, let’s make this a tribute to styles of American music that I grew up listening to, and that I really found inspirational throughout my life! It was quite natural for me to want to do that because | grew up listening to Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan… while my mum was very into Bill Haley & The Comets and stuff like that, so in my head ‘Crawling Out The Door’ was actually a Bill Haley-style rock’n’roll song. I literally went, Okay, let’s get a rock’n’roll song on there, let’s get an Eagles-style song on there.’ Without being too cheesy about it, I tried to channel a feeling of American 50s, 60s and 70s music.

“The song ‘Round Hill Drive’ was inspired by a 2023 trip to Nashville where I had a meeting at Round Hill Records. During the discussion I was told we were sitting in the old ‘live room’ of Quadrophonic recording studio where Neil Young recorded much of Harvest. They pointed out the corner where Neil had sat while recording ‘Old Man’ and ‘Heart Of Gold’; where James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt sat singing their backing vocals.

“On the flight home I wrote the lyrics to this song which tells the story of the trip and the story of Harvest, an album I grew up with and that inspired my playing and songwriting I looked to emulate the arrangements of Harvest on the song. I played acoustic with a harmonica lead, even taking the first bar riff of The Needle And The Damage Done’ at the very start of the song. Seattle-based Hamilton McKay Belk plays pedal steel, and I had drums and backing vocals tracked in Nashville by local session musicians Tony Morra [drums] and Brittany Hadley [backing vocals].”

The song flicks a switch in your mind, with drumbeats to make the heart beat. Assume the brace position, because this is an album of break-in-case-of-emergency tracks.

ANDREW DARLINGTON