Embodying the genuine spirit of self-reliant music-making, Denver ensemble American Culture merges gritty indie rock, vintage college rock, and raw lo-fi punk while folding in touches of dub and Afrobeat. Fronted by Chris Adolf, ex-frontman of Bad Weather California, the outfit issued its first recording in 2015, the ragged Pure American Gum, and resurfaced six years later with the 2021 album For My Animals.
A mainstay of Denver’s independent scene, Adolf launched American Culture in 2013 as his prior band wound down. Fueled by devotion to underground indie circles and years spent traversing the nationwide DIY network of house shows and temporary venues, he and the new lineup tracked material with K Records figure Calvin Johnson at Dub Narcotic Studios in Olympia, Washington. Echoing the Jesus & Mary Chain, Dead Milkmen, and Wipers, the songs expressed the group’s affinity for indie music’s nonconformists and outcasts. Ahead of the Olympia Sessions’ 2015 appearance, American Culture cut its official debut, Pure American Gum, for Jigsaw, which surfaced earlier that year. The band kept performing and composing, though its next release, For My Animals, arrived only in early 2021 via Athens indie HHBTM Records.
