American Bollywood, Young the Giant’s fifth studio album and first since 2018’s Mirror Master, is structured after the ancient Sanskrit Hindu text of The Mahabharata (part of the Bhagavad Gita). The band’s front man and creative force Sameer Gadhia learned about those tales by way of the Mumbai-based Amar Chitra Katha comic books/graphic novels with their serialized depiction of religious legends, folklore and epic poems. That nexus of the ancient/classical and modern/art-pop culture is at the heart of American Bollywood’s various threads and subtexts.
Separated into four acts of four songs apiece (I. Origins, II. Exile, III. Battle, IV. Denouement), American Bollywood is a musical meditation, a song suite, a cinematic blend of modern indie-rock and ancient Indian instrumentation, including sitar and tablas. The album recounts the true-life journey of Young the Giant’s front man Sameer Gadhia’s parents, who emigrated in 1984 from India to America, where he was born, tracing his own internal struggle to preserve a cultural identity while assimilating into the melting pot of Southern California’s Orange County. Continuing to live up to his band’s unique name, Gadhia says, “We still believe in the power of being young, naive, innocent and optimistic. We always try to find the beauty in things.” American Bollywood does just that, turning his family history and memories into a work of exquisite high art and popular appeal.