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The Demonstration Tapes — First Amendment
(Apollon Records AP227, 2025, CD / LP / DL)

The Demonstration Tapes — Second Amendment
(Apollon Records AP272, 2026, CD / LP / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2026-11-05

First Amendment Cover artSecond Amendment Cover art

Creativity is a fascinating human endeavor. Brian Eno has been known to ask why we create art, and has written a book on the subject. We’re not here to provide any insight into the issue, but to talk about some music that has an unexpected inspiration behind it. Sister Sonny is a Norwegian band that’s been around since the mid-90s, releasing six albums from 1998 to 2007. A few years ago, three members of that band — Pedro Carmona-Alvarez, Lars Heintz, and Fredrik Færden — got the crazy idea of writing one song for each of the 50 United States. At first it was just a goofy suggestion, but apparently their creative natures found the concept appealing, and they actually started working on it. The plan became to tie the release to the 250th anniversary of the USA in 2026. As they mention in the liner notes, when their first EP worth of songs came out in 2025 and coincided with a new president in the White House, they considered naming the project Bad Timing Production, but decided to stay with the previously agreed-upon Demonstration Tapes. After all, they, as Norwegians, were writing about the mythical version of America they’d grown up with, not the current state of the real country, and there are no mentions of mass deportations, tariffs, or military aggression, let alone the names of any leaders. By the end of 2025, the first full set of songs was released as First Amendment, featuring such titles as “Massachusetts Magic Potion,” “New York City Cheesecake,” “Delaware Decency,” and “Washington Loves Me.” These fourteen songs don’t try to sum up the related states or capture their essence — to my mind, it’s just an example of songwriters challenging their creativity with an out-of-the-box starting point, rather like a short-story writer taking up the challenge of writing a story with the opening sentence “There were rats in the soufflé again.” (This is a real thing.) As with Sister Sonny, the songs here are melodic and on the gentle side, with jangly guitars, atmospheric keyboards, and a heavy sense of melancholy irony, but also a fair range of tempos and moods. And a sense of humor, as indicated by “There Must Be a Place in Hawaii Called Acapulco” and “Surfin' South Dakota.” Or lyrics like “I’m driving to Washington, I’m heading to Washington… I’ll make my money as a lumberjack.” As a resident of Washington, I could be upset at having my state reduced to a joke based on a century-old cliché, but it’s so silly I can’t help smiling. (I’m not sure if this is better or worse than when Robyn Hitchcock reduced the area to “computers and coffee and smack.” If they choose to actually visit Washington, I’ll be happy to help them try to find any actual lumberjacks.)

Second Amendment came out in October 2026, with eleven more songs about eleven more states. “Clean Cut Connecticut,” “The Nights We Spent in Richmond, Rhode Island,” “Kansas, Pay Phone,” and the rest continue the virtual road trip in no particular order, geographical, alphabetical, or otherwise. With such an onslaught of material, it is probably to be expected that  some songs are more successful than others. Here and there, they indulge a little too much in a fondness for reverb, obscuring the music in an indistinct haze — I know this is a sound some bands seem to love, but I find it frustrating not to be able to hear what they’re doing. But on the whole, it’s an enjoyable and entertaining set of songs, halfway through a monumental project that says more about them as songwriters than it does about the country they’re taking as subject matter.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases, 2026 releases

Related artist(s): The Demonstration Tapes

More info
http://1-4firstep.bandcamp.com/album/first-amendment

 

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