Most music writers were fans first; many of us still are. Which makes it a big deal for us, too, when an act we’ve been rooting for delivers an album that feels a new personal best.
Singer-songwriter Pete Mancini has never been one to pull his punches—not with his former band Butchers Blind, and not on the three solo LPs and miscellaneous singles that led up to this moment—but his new album American Equator is genuinely next-level. Produced by Matt Patton of Drive-By Truckers, this ten-song set is mature, powerful and timely, confidently charting the fault lines between who we are, who we want to be, and who we may yet become, both as individuals and as a nation.
Patton’s warm production lends extra vibrance to an outstanding set of performances from the album’s core four of Mancini (lead vocals, guitar, piano), Patton (bass, guitar, harmonies), Joe Leone (drums, harmonies), and Jay Gonzalez (keyboards, guitar, harmonies). This core also manages to achieve a dynamic range of sounds—from the thunderous crunch of “Calamity People” to the continental elegance of “The Paris Hotel” to the dusty country-folk of “Leaving For Raleigh”—without ever losing the thread. Mancini describes his music as “Americana power pop,” and there are moments when you hear exactly that stylistic mash-up coming to life in the mix, yet each of these tracks also inhabits its own distinctive and memorable universe.
The album’s journey begins with Mancini counting in opener “Calamity People” before the band comes in hot with an appropriately calamitous sound, punctuated by a ripping guitar solo. The song is a dark portrait of America’s addiction to cruelty and paranoia that feels like an ambulance wail for our country. The closing lines of “Calamity”—“When they lay these days to rest / The casket will be closed / It’s for the best”—are then recycled as the opening lines of the following title track, though only after a guitar-and-organ intro that reminds you what a big Tom Petty fan you’re listening to. The song itself is an urgent, razor-sharp anthem for our times, bult around this chilling chorus: “This is the American equator / Just ride the faders / ’Til you can’t hear the other side.” The closing, repeated cry of “Hold on tight” resonates more than ever here in February 2025.
Welcome warmth bleeds into the proceedings with the sunny “Technicolor Days,” blending Americana jangle and resonance with power-pop bounce and hookiness in classic Mancini style. Batting cleanup, “Skid Row Skyline” is another pumping, Petty-esque rocker with a socio-political edge: “Nobody’s born here on skid row / You get dropped off or got nowhere to go / You get a room upstairs or a tent below / You’re in cuffs or a bag when you leave skid row.”
“Spy Rock Road” is a number that reminds you’ve got two-fifths of Drive-By Truckers on board, a dark, muscular blues-rocker about mountain-man weed farmers with a nice breakdown at the chorus and guest Kell Kellum bringing it on pedal steel. At the album’s mid-point we meet its most unique inhabitant, the wistful, beautifully imagined ballad “The Paris Hotel.” It’s an alternately sweet and bitter romantic reminiscence whose piano and strings suggest Mancini’s friend the great Jimmy Webb.
Americana finds its strongest representation here in “Leaving For Raleigh,” a rather haunted country-rock number about feeling out of place and longing for home. Next up is the album’s second single “Stomping Grounds,” a pulsing, thrumming celebration of achieving sobriety and making amends (“All things must learn to die / It’s getting better now / Better now, better now”).
The opening and closing tracks on American Equator were co-written by Mancini with his friend and fellow singer-songwriter Travis McKeveny, who passed away in 2021. The big-boned “The Signal” feels like Mancini communing with the spirit of his pal: “Smile from a friend / Untimely end / Spark to a flame / To carry every day.”
The album closes out with “Sun Came Up,” the other McKeveny co-write, an elegiac yet also optimistic number, framed by rhythmic piano and gospel-tinged organ. “Words you left us hang in the air / Up in the rafters like a solemn prayer,” sings Mancini. “In my mind I can hear you sing / The sun came up / It always does.” Music is a healing force, one it feels like we need more than ever in this moment.
Repeat listens bring more elements to the fore: Gonzalez paints these tracks in a rainbow of shades from classic Hammond to gospel organ to the clever ’80s synth bits that add a playful edge to otherwise serious tunes like “Stomping Grounds” and “The Signal.” Meanwhile, Patton’s bass work is every bit as memorable as his production, and Leone gives every track here a potent heartbeat.
Beyond the confidence of these tunes, there’s a genuine vitality as Mancini pours his heart out, leaving it all on the studio floor. American Equator is the sound of an artist coming into his own, chronicling a tumultuous era with equal measures of honesty and resilience. Here is a soundtrack for the journey ahead, an album that feels like it’s arriving just in time.
(Also, don't miss our in-depth interview with Pete Mancini.)