AMERICAN MOTORS: FUNCTIONAL MUSIC

American Motors’ second album, Functional Music, is a darker, more cinematic trip through the world of the Lancaster, Pennsylvania duo. Out 6 November via Expert Work, the record builds on the off-kilter post-punk of 2024’s Content, pushing further into big melodies, gnarly repetition and the kind of characters you might find drifting through a lost New Hollywood film. Recorded with J. Robbins at Magpie Cage, Functional Music finds guitarist Dustin White drawing on decades spent in the DIY underground, Appalachian detail and a distinctly American sense of the absurd. From alternate tunings lifted from Van Halen to the nihilism of Five Easy Pieces, White talks about finding confidence in the band’s vision, making noise and melody coexist, and writing about people he’d rather drink alongside than look down on.

“Functional Music” feels darker and more cinematic than Content. What changed for American Motors when you started writing this record, and what did you want to explore this time around?

I think confidence in our vision is maybe the biggest difference. When we started writing the songs that became Content, we were really trying to figure out what we were doing and how to do it. Honestly, we knew more about what we didn’t want to do than what we did. Our initial thesis was, “What if the guitar sounded like a new age tape over the meanest rhythm section?” and that served as a basic concept.

This time around, we’d already built a framework and a template to work inside. Of course, my contrarian nature meant I wanted to paint outside those lines and throw in as many curveballs as possible. Like pulling out the honky-tonk guitar solo on “One Chord”. Then you remember how obsessed The Birthday Party — and most of Nick Cave’s oeuvre — were with classic country, and it doesn’t seem quite so wild. Or maybe that’s me trying to find aesthetic justification.

A weird unlock for this record was a guitar tuning I lifted from Van Halen’s “Top Jimmy”. I was driving home, heard it on the radio and assumed the weird harmonic intervals were some Eddie Van Halen guitar wizardry. I got home, looked it up and discovered it was just an alternate tuning. Once I put a guitar in that tuning, ideas started falling out of it. Five of the eight songs use it, and “No Horses” uses a slight modification.

Thematically, I felt like we’d built a world on Content, and this time it should go a little closer on the people inhabiting it. I didn’t set out to make the record darker. If anything, it’s a reaction to everything being darker in the world by several orders of magnitude. It’s impossible not to reflect that. The fact that I didn’t get laughed out of the room for the lyrics on Content also gave me the confidence to lean in further.

There’s a real contrast between the album’s harsher moments and its bigger melodies and shoegaze textures. How did you find the balance between noise, repetition and melody?

I wanted this record to be both more gnarly and more melodic. Those are sort of the two edges of what we do. On one side is “let’s play this chord twenty-something times in a row”; on the other, “hey, let’s do a big pop moment with harmonies”. The trick is not to separate them into two buckets of songs, but to make them work together.

The big pop section of “No Horses” is just the guitar playing one chord the entire time — a really gnarly, noisy chord. If you treat that like a drone, you can go pretty melodic over it. Then you play a dissonant chord twenty-something times right after, returning to the gnarly side. The hard part is making it feel like one idea rather than two taped together.

Our general approach is to learn harsh, so the melodic moments stand out more. We were absolutely questioning whether we’d gone too far when Alex did the harmonies on “No Horses”, but realised we’d just hit the edge and hadn’t gone past it.

The shoegaze textures are something I’ve always done. I love guitar as a textural instrument, and I used some of the same vintage gear that the iconic shoegaze bands used because I’m a dork about it. I’m not going to use this space to complain about bands that just sound like Deftones, while dressing like George Costanza, being called shoegaze in 2026. I’m absolutely not. Nope. Not at all. They do look great, though.

The songs feel like snapshots of people living on the edge of a crumbling world. How important are those characters, places and small details to the way you tell stories through American Motors?

The old adage “the devil is in the details” is incredibly true. I spent a bunch of years as the weird guitar guy for a handful of singer-songwriters and learned a lot from that, particularly playing with T.K. Webb in Sundown. He’s probably the most gifted songwriter in the classic sense I’ve ever worked with.

When we started working on the first record, I knew I wanted to pull from that tradition. I was obsessing over Warren Zevon, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Terry Allen and, of course, David Berman. Storytelling felt more interesting to me personally than abstract poetry.

The biggest thing was making absolutely sure it never seemed like I was looking down at or laughing at these characters. There’s comedy in there, because there’s this odd comedy to all tragedy, but I wanted it to be clear that these are folks I’m drinking alongside. I’m inhabiting the same world.

I try to sprinkle in very specific references, but the amazing thing is how universal they become. Colonial Lanes was a real place in Huntington, West Virginia, but it turns out there were multiple unrelated bowling alleys named Colonial Lanes. As we were wrapping up Functional Music, I realised how many specific convenience stores and brands I’d mentioned throughout it.

The only thing I typically leave intentionally vague is gender. I think the mother in “Big Tyler” is the only character whose gender is specified. I guess one tends to assume a cowboy is male, but it’s 2026, babe, and cowboys can be anything.

When we played in West Virginia, I drove Alex by a bunch of the specific places referenced on the first record so he could get the full picture. But one little guided tour isn’t going to paint the full picture.

You worked with J. Robbins again at Magpie Cage, a studio with a rich history. What does that space bring out of American Motors, and how did the recording process shape the album?

I didn’t realise until after we booked the sessions for our first record that Magpie Cage was OZ in the ’90s. Once I discovered that and did a couple of quick searches, I realised how many records I love had been made there. There are the obvious ones by Jawbox and Shudder To Think, but it was also used by a lot of major-label ’90s New York bands like St. Johnny. Eli Janney worked with Brainiac there, too. The lore is deep.

We demo stuff really intensely before getting to the studio, and plan exactly what we intend to do. We actually write a lot through the demo process. It’s how we whittle ideas into songs — lots of addition and subtraction. We still leave wiggle room for things to shift and for unexpected experimentation.

Working with J. is amazing and helps elevate everything. Instead of just looking at waveforms for mistakes, as is all too common these days, he listens for anything that takes him out of the moment. He’s not just trying to fix every last detail you can see on the screen but can’t hear, to the point of losing all humanity. We cut all the basics to two-inch tape, which helps keep you honest. Plus, the live room there makes drums sound amazing.

The fact that this was our second time working together meant we already knew what to expect. I can’t say enough kind things about working with J.

You’ve described Functional Music through the lens of ’60s and ’70s New Hollywood. What films, characters or visual ideas were sitting in your heads while making the record?

Five Easy Pieces. It’s one of my favourite movies ever. The nihilism of it and its disdain for class. The idea of not living up to your potential, not as a character flaw or failure, but because it’s more interesting to fuck around and find out — while knowing that world is always there if you want it.

There’s something about classic New Hollywood where things don’t always resolve, and sometimes there isn’t even a major conflict. Just people existing. Moral ambiguity. Who is the good guy? I feel like that’s really analogous to the stories I wanted to tell. Nothing of consequence has to happen for something to be interesting. How many days of your life does something truly consequential happen? If you added up all the time you’ve spent in a convenience store trying to decide what snack to buy, you’d be depressed.

In the video for “No Horses”, there’s a quick shot of Alex sitting on a bench wearing a red Space Camp hat that’s totally a nod to Paris, Texas.

“Tragedy” lifts a line from The Monkees’ movie Head, which BBS produced and Jack Nicholson co-wrote. I’ve been obsessed with that line since I first watched the movie on VHS at my friend Matt’s house. It’s probably my most-quoted movie ever, and I feel bad for everybody I’ve responded to with “I’d like a glass of cold gravy with a hair in it” when they’ve asked me a question.

Somebody will punch me in the face for this, but I suggest Urban Cowboy is a New Hollywood movie in spirit. Nothing of consequence happens for most of it. It was based on a magazine article — which I suggest finding and reading, because it’s a way gnarlier story — and basically it’s just “we hang out at this bar”. I’d say that movie and its amazing soundtrack had an outsized influence on this record. Plus, the villain is basically rocking the same look as Tracy Pew from The Birthday Party. Apologies for making two Birthday Party references in such quick succession.