Dan Deacon

This land is our land.

This land is no man’s land.

Dan Deacon’s “America” is a sonically sprawling concept album that tackles the overdetermined and contradictory knowledge surrounding the United States.

His expressionist lyrics describe American false consciousness and environmental destruction, the beauty of the American landscape and the power of political activism.

It makes sense that Deacon took his act to the Occupy movement on May Day, and his collectivist politics can be heard in this album’s music.

Beautiful and brash all at once, “America” sounds like “The Star-Spangled Banner” for our particular moment of political unrest.

Classically trained in composition, Deacon leads his most engaging conversation yet between conventional orchestration and noise.

A compromise between the full-throttle freakiness of “Spiderman of the Rings” and the epically ornate “Bromst,” this album has moments explosive (“Lots”) and restrained (“Prettyboy”).

“America” closes with a sweeping, four-part “USA” suite as broad as the land it laments and celebrates.

By Patrick Beane