Jason Scott & The High Heat – American Grin

With the crisp jangle of keys and the sharp slam of a door, an engine grumbles awake and so, too, does Jason Scott & The High Heat’s sophomore album. A swirling storm of radio static immediately fills the ear, parting only briefly to allow in the lonesome wail of a fiddle, a few grave voices likely bearing bad news and, eventually, the opening track of American Grin.

The dingy funk twang of ‘High Country’ crackles through and soon wins out, the too-cool opus radiating the heat haze of the highway and beckoning listeners to come along for the ride. The 13-song collection begins as many journeys so often do, the voyage ahead pregnant with the unuttered promises of all that lie just beyond the horizon. Along the way, a batch of strange characters, a heap of immutable truths and a band bound for greatness will be revealed.

A hypnotic soundscape, however, must first be trekked, the terrain of American Grin shifting between the languid disco country of tunes like the cinematic ‘Yardwork’ and the swaggering ‘Intermission’, the hardy Heartland rock of the explosive ‘Bernadette’ and the steady ‘Golden’, the dazzling folk of ‘Natalie’ and back again. While seemingly incohesive at times, with this album, genre is merely a mirage in the distance. The moment you think you have it figured out, the illusion warps and fades.

Beliefs also blur across such topography as the songs – littered with empty sermons, spent cigarettes and bottles sucked dry – whisper of good, evil, and everything and nothing in between. You’ll encounter heroes and villains in the thundering ‘Get In Line’, indulge in moral ambiguity throughout the breezy ‘If We Make Til The Mornin’’ and, on the jangling ‘Too Wasted’, find that bingo hall shootouts are a far-too regular occurrence on this winding odyssey of American noir.

In between the white noise maelstrom at the start and the fading frequencies of the closing ‘Maria’, a landscape full of beauties, oddities and individual truths unfolds. American Grin is a masterpiece not only in sound but in substance, the album a roadmap for this weird and wonderful ride of existence.

8/10

Jason Scott & The High Heat’s 2025 project, American Grin, is available everywhere March 28 via Leo33.

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