 The Red Scare, the War on Crime, the War on Terrorism, they’re just excuses for cracking down on anything the establishment finds objectionable.”

"American Band" received very positive reviews from music critics.At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album holds an average score of 88, based on 18 reviews, which means "universal acclaim".Carl Wilson of "Slate" called the album their "most powerful release in almost a decade", believing it to be " a kind of rebirth for the band."