American Aquarium's “4x60” finds a younger BJ Barham in the back seat of a Chevy Blazer. The song from the latest American Aquarium record New Ways to Lose is full of “back in the day…” details. For those who remember rural North Carolina in the ‘90s, there’s the implicit detail that an ‘80s Blazer in that era was a simple vehicle that country folk kept on the road long after it threatened to crap out. That rattle under the dash? Permanent. The A/C? Dead. Yet little Barham and his family tore down the backroads of (presumably) Rockingham County, as the song says, with four windows down at 60 miles an hour. Or, as Barham sings in the hook, “That four by 60 A/C.”
It’s a country music staple: a peppy summer jam built upon nostalgia for scrappier, simpler times. In this, Barham excels. He’s lived the life of which country music is made: small-town Southern childhood leading to a wild, hard-touring early career leading to the sober, professionally successful perch from which to consider the scope of his life thus far.
