Back in the USA

"Back in the USA" is the great paradox of the MC5 catalog — a song that sounds like pure celebration, Chuck Berry's original reinterpreted with a ferocity that somehow makes the patriotic surface shimmer with irony. The guitars are cleaner here than on "Kick Out the Jams," almost gleaming, the production on the album version capturing a tightness that the band's live recordings often sacrificed for electricity. The riff is joyful in a way that feels almost suspicious given the band's politics — this is a song about America written by people who were actively fighting to transform it, which gives the enthusiasm an edge that a straight reading misses entirely. Tyner sings it straight, no audible wink, which is its own kind of sophistication. The tempo never wavers, locked in like a machine built for a single purpose, and that purpose is to move bodies. There's a horns-in-the-air quality to the arrangement, the guitars chiming rather than grinding, the rhythm section pushing rather than pummeling. Detroit in 1969 was burning, literally and figuratively, and here was a band playing the most American song they could find and meaning it as both love letter and accusation. This is highway music, open-window music, the song you play when you're arriving somewhere after a long absence and you're not entirely sure how you feel about being back.