New album American Sunshine, available from Compass Records later this summer, is marked by several sideways glances at the American dream – that perilous balance between potential and reality – along with knowing ruminations on the transformative effects of love and the passing of time, set to some of the purest pop, hardest rock, and most emotionally bare acoustic balladry Hay has yet laid down. Curiously, the America of American Sunshine is profoundly shaped by two very different dream factories on nearly opposite ends of the country: California and Nashville.