Album Review: American Music Club - San Francisco

After the dispiriting experience (for the band at least) of Mercury, American Music Club went another direction for 1994’s San Francisco. Which is not to say it’s a mainstream album. Indeed as an album of 15 tracks, many of which are quite disparate, it’s nothing short of sprawling.

Fearless, the opening track, kicks off with Bruce Kaphan’s steel guitar prominent in the mix before Mark Eitzel’s moody vocals come in, singing “lost again…” in a lovelorn lament. It’s a lovely sounding song, though for my money the lyrics on this are a little obvious. In fact the lyrics on this album in my opinion are a little disappointing when compared with previous albums.

It’s Your Birthday appears to be a response to touring with Pearl Jam and the prevailing grunge sound of the time as it is a kind of self-consciously aggressive sounding song, while Can You Help Me? is a more pleasant sounding song. It sounds quite commercial, but it’s actually a really good song, with a ‘proper’ verse and chorus. It should have been a hit, but perhaps Eitzel and co weren’t wearing the right plaid shirts and goatees.

Love Doesn’t Belong to Anyone is another track featuring prominent steel guitar, and again it’s quite pretty, with delicate picked guitar. It does not, however, feel important, in the same way that some of their previous work does. After the fairly ordinary Wish the World Away we get a kind of left turn with the classicly titled How Many Six Packs Does It Take To Screw in a Light, which is a sort of quirky kind of song. Cape Canaveral which follows is a lot more downbeat as the bands instruments coalesce into a magnificently gloomy murk.

After Hello Amsterdam which is the requisite AMC ‘clunker’ on this album, the rest of the album features a great streak of really strong songs, musically in any case. The Revolving Door has a soaring melody and a great vocal performance from Mark Eitzel, The band sound quite polished on this one, whereas next track In The Shadow of the Valley is another slab of magnificently brooding, gloomy murk in the vein of Cape Canaveral.

What Holds The World Together is an acoustic led, almost torch song, slightly reminiscent of the Smiths but featuring a gloriously big chorus where Eitzel sings that “the world is held together by the wind that blows through Gena Rowlands’ hair.” Clearly. I Broke My Promise is another quite polished track which references muse Kathleen Burns. The Smiths are invoked again on sparse acoustic track The Thorn In My Side Is Gone, and I’ll Be Gone is a pleasing slab of melodrama.

It’s a curious collection which features some very strong songs, but not sure it ‘holds together’ that well as an album. There are a few mediocre moments, a bit like these blogposts.

Album Review: American Music Club – United Kingdom

This 1989 album for me has always been overshadowed by its predecessor, California, and also by the fact that it has only 9 songs, of which 3 are live. I was never wild about the title of the album either so never gave this album the consideration it deserves. It’s devastating.

The opener, Here They Roll Down, is quite unusual, starting with a bed of ambient, traffic-like noise, before Mark Eitzel dislocated voice comes in, accompanied by electric guitar and an absence of percussion. Indeed there is very little percussion over the whole of this album. The track becomes darker towards the end as Eitzel sings “if your broken face can find a lover, give away your chance to fly, give away your will power”, before finally singing “hey look at me, I’m free” while sounding anything but happy about it, before a huge foreboding bass drum comes in.

Dreamers of the Dream follows, a more straightforward song structurally, in a vaguely country way, before the stripped-down acoustic Never Mind (pre-dated Nirvana!), which is a live recording, dominated by Eitzel’s voice. The title track features a recurring electric guitar motif which sounds like Duane Eddy on downers. The mood darkens in the bridge with the lines “When you held me in your arms, why didn’t you want me? When you held me in your arms, why didn’t you touch me?”

At this point 4 tracks into the album, I’m in a fairly fragile emotional state. The album becomes darker still with Dream Is Gone. Eitzel is at his wits end here, clinging on to fading hope for dear life, and the track would be best discussed by simply reprinting the entirety of the lyrics. Heaven of Your Hands, is a momentary respite, echoing Dreamers of the Dream, with a similar melody. This is a beautifully constructed song, featuring the band with a piano element added in, echoing Nick Drake's Northern Sky.

The darkness returns to envelope the listener completely with Kathleen. It’s a barely-there, sparse song, based on an offbeat guitar pattern and Eitzel singing to his muse, his ex-lover Kathleen Burns. It’s another live track, and really is pleading of the most plaintive type, and the somg climaxes with Eitzel bellowing “your love Kathleen is for someone I (then roars) SWEAR I COULD HAVE BEEN”.

Most American Music Club albums feature an absolute clunker, and this one is no different with the penultimate track, Hula Maiden. It’s a cheesy big country ballad, sung live, and all I’ll say is it’s not my cup of tea. The album then ends with a whimper, Animal Pen is another track featuring just a guitar and Eitzel’s voice, with a fairly unusual if insubstantial melody.

So there are only 9 songs here, and only 4 of them as far as I’m aware feature the full band. It’s a pretty heavy album, but one to embrace, place in your CD player and glue it shut. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to find, though you might be lucky enough to find the version which features the California album also.