America - Heritage II: Demos/Alternate Takes 1971-1976 (LP)

America’s story always reads best in the margins. Everyone knows the sunlit singles and the soft focus of radio memories, but the grit is in the demos, the half-finished harmonies, the room tone of a borrowed guitar and a reel-to-reel that almost runs out of tape. Heritage II: Demos/Alternate Takes 1971-1976 zooms in on that side of the trio and it is a quietly irresistible listen. Issued by Omnivore Recordings in 2019, it picks up where the first Heritage set left off and follows Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek from early post-folk sketches into the George Martin years, when the arrangements grew wider and the ambitions did too.

The period here is the classic run. These are the seasons when America were moving from the pastoral strum of their London beginnings to a band with a Grammy on the shelf and a global audience. You can hear why. The demos are lean and close to the mic. Acoustic guitars sit like a spine, often in that bright 12 string jangle that defined the band’s silhouette, while the three voices braid in arrangements that feel born on a couch, not in a control room. When the alternates arrive, the picture sharpens. The rhythm sections step forward, keyboard colors slip in, and you get a sense of the choices that turned sketches into the songs lodged in so many collections of America vinyl.

What makes the set feel valuable rather than just archival is how alive the performances are. Beckley’s ballads come across with that careful melodic architecture he’s always favored, each line landing exactly where it ought to. Bunnell’s west coast imagery is intact even in rehearsal, full of roads and weather and the sense of motion that made Homecoming such a cherished record. Peek’s country lean mixes sweetly into the blend, and when he takes a lead you remember how many lovers of soft rock came to the band through his gentle authority. Nothing here sounds like a vault dump. It sounds like a band with a clear identity learning, in real time, how to frame it.

The George Martin connection hangs over the mid 70s material and you can feel it even when he is not in the room. Once the trio began working with Martin in 1974, the songs wore a different coat, and some of these alternates carry that AIR Studios glow that fans of Holiday, Hearts, and Hideaway will clock right away. The guitars shimmer more, the pianos are set like jewels, the backing vocals find little countermelodies that only reveal themselves on a second pass. Yet the intimacy never disappears, which is a neat trick and a reminder of why that partnership has aged so well.

Credit to Omnivore for presenting it with care. Their America program has been smart about context, pairing clean transfers with notes that add a little shape to the narrative without turning the whole thing into homework. Sequencing matters on a set like this and they keep it moving, toggling between embryonic takes and fuller versions so your ears re-calibrate from track to track. On Heritage II: Demos/Alternate Takes 1971-1976 vinyl the acoustic textures feel particularly present, with the air around the vocals giving you that small-room illusion collectors chase.

If you came in through the hits, the thrill here is connecting the dots. You can trace motifs and lines that would later anchor familiar cuts, hear a rhythmic feel that gets tightened a year later, notice a lyric still in pencil. It is a gentle education in how a band with a light touch actually works. If you have been living with America albums on vinyl for years, it is even more fun. The set becomes a companion listen to the studio discography, a way to reset ears you think you know. I found myself pulling an old copy of Hearts off the shelf after a spin, noticing tiny arrangement choices I had missed for years.

For crate diggers and casual fans alike, this is the kind of archive release that earns a permanent slot. It rewards focused listening, but it also suits a late afternoon with the curtains open and the volume just up from conversation. If you collect America vinyl, it fills a real gap between bootleg murk and greatest hits gloss. And if you are trying to buy America records online and keep running into the same few titles, put this on the list right next to the studio touchstones. It plays like a love letter to process, and it reminds you that the distance between a humble tape on the table and a song that lasts fifty years is smaller than you think.

One last note for the collectors who haunt a Melbourne record store or browse late for vinyl records Australia imports. Omnivore’s pressing has the kind of attention to source and sequence that keeps a reissue from feeling like homework. It sounds like a living thing, which is the whole point of digging through the heritage in the first place.