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AMERICA
London Roundhouse 11 November 2007

After a brief visit earlier this year, veteran soft rockers America were unexpectedly back for a full tour. This was a homecoming of theirs to the recently re-opened Roundhouse where they played many shows supporting name artists in their very early days, a great setting and one boasting a crystal clear sound.

Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell share the vocals and introductions and their styles complement each other well, with bassist Rich Campbell adding to their trademark harmonies.. Old America favourites- Ventura Highway, Lonely People, Tin Man and Daisy Jane to name but four - still sounded fresh but the highlights for me were hearing their too often neglected 80's pop-rock singles You Can Do Magic and The Border, plus some album tracks I was unfamiliar with such as Inspector Mills.

They are also masters at pacing the show: after a fairly gentle opening, the acoustic guitars progressively competed with the lead guitar of Michael Woods- a talented player despite a disturbing likeness to Sid James- and by the end an almost unrecognizable Sandman saw him and Gerry's guitars competing with each other in a wall of noise. The one disappointment was that they restricted themselves to just three songs from their excellent comeback album Here and Now.

Sister Golden Hair, driven by Michael's slide guitar, closed the set with their only UK hit Horse With No Name the inevitable encore. A talented band with a back catalogue dripping with melody and a genial stage presence- an excellent if mellow way to spend a Sunday evening.

Review by Andy Nathan