BJ Barham is known most popularly for fronting the rock ‘n’ roll band American Aquarium, but a forced quarantine in a Brussels hotel following the Bataclan attacks in November 2015 turned his attention home. Homesick but unable to leave the country, Barham wrote this entire record in the span of those two days, a mix of personal and fictional stories centered around his hometown of Reidsville, North Carolina.
In Rockingham, Barham details the decline of the American Dream from the perspective of a World War II veteran forced to watch jobs promised to him and his fellow soldiers dry up and disappear due to mechanization or lack of positions. Though not written to be a political statement, the album becomes a haunting one in the Trump era of America, where thousands of members of the working class attempted to reconcile who they are with their lack of income in a violent and xenophobic way during the election. By recalling life in his small hometown, Barham tells the stories of these people stuck in dead end jobs in a rapidly decaying town, unhappy and unable to pay the bills, that feel applicable to the residents of America’s more populous cities
The Fat Angel Sings 