Back In The USA

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Back In The USA album cover
Album Information
  • Artist: MC5 (See All Albums by MC5)
  • Date Released: Mar 29, 2005

  • Genre: Rock/Pop, Style: Hard Rock

  • Label: Rhino Atlantic

Total Tracks: 11   Total Length: 28:03

eMusic Features

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Six Degrees of Refused’s The Shape Of Punk To Come

By Jonah Bayer, eMusic Contributor

It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »

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MC5 in Retrospect

By Lenny Kaye, eMusic Contributor

The Five alive were a magnificent sight to behold and behear. Twin guitars bent backwards in tandem, instruments machine-gunning the heavens; rhythm section thrashing and propelling like a four-on-the-floor speedshift; lead singer bobbing and weaving and shimmying and shouting out incantations. The roar off the stage was primal, enveloping, wall-rattling; the message of carnal freedom unmistakable. In the lingo of the times, as propagandized by John Sinclair, Minister of Information for the White Panther party,… more »

They Say All Music Guide

While lacking the monumental impact of Kick Out the Jams, the MC5′s second album is in many regards their best and most influential, its lean, edgy sound anticipating the emergence of both the punk and power pop movements to follow later in the decade. Bookended by a pair of telling covers — Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” and Chuck Berry’s “Back in the U.S.A.” — the disc is as much a look back at rock & roll’s origins as it is a push forward into the music’s future; given the Five’s vaunted revolutionary leanings, for instance, it’s both surprising and refreshing to discover the record’s emotional centerpiece is a doo wop-inspired ballad, “Let Me Try,” that’s the most lovely and gentle song in their catalog. The recurring theme which drives Back in the USA is adolescence, its reminiscences alternately fond and embittered — while cuts like “Tonight,” “Teenage Lust,” “High School,” and “Shakin’ Street” celebrate youth in all its rebellious glory, others like “The American Ruse” and “The Human Being Lawnmower” condemn a system which eats its young, filling their heads with lies before sending them off to war. Equally gripping is the record’s singular sound — produced by Jon Landau with an almost complete disregard for the bottom end, Back in the USA captures a live-wire intensity 180 degrees removed from the group’s live sound yet perfectly suited to the material at hand, resulting in music which not only salutes the power of rock & roll but also reaffirms it. – Jason Ankeny

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