This release sees Pennsylvanian Jefferson Pepper two thirds of the way through his ambitious 50 song project to try and answer the question "What has happened to my country?" via an examination of American social history as evidenced by the lives of ordinary people. Pepper set about this task after being both inspired by Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States and perplexed by the legal wrangles of Christian fundamentalists to deny the theories of evolution - which all took place in a court near his home town. Pepper is no stranger to going against the majority grain - his 2005 debut Christmas in Fallujah was full of songs calling the bluff of the American dream.

The first volume of the trio (same design, red background) covered the period from Columbus to the depression in, as you would expect, a roots country and Americana feel reflecting the instrumentation of those times. Here that progresses to also include flavours of folk, rock and even punk as we journey up to 1989, though the underlying thread is still "country music for people who hate Country music", as Pepper puts it, delivered largely as protest songs, if a bit too sweetly for their own good. The third and final instalment (blue background) is released towards the end of the year.

Topics range from runaway materialism ("He who dies with most stuff wins" - 'Disposable Me, Disposable You') and the daily blue-collar struggle against economic disparity ('Break the Chain'), to plastic surgery ('The Ballad of Betty Wulfrum'), drugs ('Orphans of Endorphins') and religion ('Crucify'), stretching from the beaches of Normandy to Three Mile Island. Unfortunately, the back story and concept for this album is ultimately more interesting than the actual recording. The lyrics are more than serviceable in an honest storytelling style and the messages are earnest and valid, but there are few songs to go back to. It may have more impact in the conservative bastions of the US that it targets, but is also less likely to be heard by the very people it seeks to educate. In preaching to the converted, it might have you snoozing during the sermon.

Two tracks that do stand out are ‘Ben’ and ‘One Percent’. The former is Rolf Harris’s ‘Two Little Boys’ given a ‘Born On The Fourth Of July’ makeover and is just as sentimental - a softly delivered tale of childhood friendship, separation by way of academic achievement and the draft respectively, and the crushing of one life by the Vietnam experience. Parallels with the Iraq situation of course, and entirely predictable and sickly sweet; but the melody sticks and Pepper’s generally weak voice is allowed prominence. The latter is a spoken word diatribe on the inequality of wealth distribution over an electronic backing which makes it unique in this collection and the whole thing reminds of Paul Hardcastle’s (N-n-n-n-)’19’. Elsewhere, noticeable failings are found in the punk finale of ‘Another White Line’ which feels palpably like a forced pastiche, as with a previous rock’n’roll era track, and some of the American rock style songs see Pepper’s vocals failing to dominate even a lacklustre guitar sound and get across the barbs present in his words. Thus they appear more like mindless Kid Rock celebrations than damning indictments.

All in all, this rarely rises above the level of an academic exercise that may be admired but does not inspire, and it’s a bit of a shame to have to come to that conclusion. Few of its home truths have not been examined before, and the overall result is a fairly stale album that just doesn’t gel, and lacks any real sense of making you sit up and listen to what Pepper has to say. 32% Jefferson Pepper on M