[Click to hear the new single on your preferred streaming service!]
There’s plenty to criticize when it comes to America. Greed and rampant inequality. Hatred and indifference. Is this a land of freedom? A land of liberty?
But if America is broken, who is to blame? Who does it reflect? A people? A person? Me?
Jai Agnish’s new indie-electro single, “Is This My America,” explores these themes with dreamy synth hooks and guitar. It’s out Sept. 26, 2021, across the streaming universe and follows up last month’s “Take Me Back There” – a song also soaked in atmospheric melodies and beats.
Agnish sings: “What would happen now if I held up a mirror to the face of my country? I wonder what I would see. Some days I’d like to circulate a petition to recall this country and take it back for all of us. Whatever happened to those schoolboy dreams of hope and redemption? Of freedom and liberty?”
Agnish, who is part Asian Indian and white, holds dual citizenship in America and Canada. He was born and raised in a New Jersey suburb and lives in Montclair.
“This song questions my country as much as it questions my identity and role within it,” Agnish said. “It’s a personal exploration about how I view America.”
Agnish wrote, produced, and recorded “Is This My America” and teamed up with Daniel Smith (Danielson, Sufjan Stevens), who mixed the song. The fellow Garden State dweller runs Familyre Studio out of Clarksboro, N.J.
Agnish enlisted the help of a long-time friend and guitarist B.D. Lenz to lay down some shimmering lead guitar.
Melissa DeMarco Clark (LAST TRAX) created the cover art.