Album Review: Mark Eitzel – Superhits International

This was an album of demos recorded by Mark Eitzel in 1999 but never officially released, only sold on his 2001 tour. He has released several demo CDs, but this one is by far the most realised. Most of the others are mainly him and an acoustic guitar but this one features a full band on most tracks, and is definitely of releasable quality.

The Man with the Hole in his Foot appears to be a straightforward country-tinged tune, but it’s shredded toward the end by some blisteringly distorted guitar from Vudi. 1000 Miles is a fine song, featuring Eitzel’s classic yearnings for lost hopes and dreams.

Hold Me is a country song that sounds almost too obvious for one of Eitzel’s regular albums. It’s ‘perfectly’ constructed with a catchy melody, a strong chorus and typical country lyrics (“I know I’ll never be a rich man”, “hold me if you don’t have anyone”). Charm School on the other hand is like a classic 60s soul tune, full of slinky guitar. What keeps these songs from being nailed on ‘hits’ is of course Eitzel’s voice, which will never have commercial appeal.

The second half of the album by and large features more stripped down songs (Come In, Will You Ever Make Room At Your Table). Kristin Intro is a downright odd piece of electronica, featuring a female, presumably Kristin reciting lyrics to Barry Manilow’s Mandy amongst other things.

The final track, Tomorrow is the finest thing on here. Reminiscent of Sun Smog Seahorse from Eitzel’s underrated 1998 album Caught in a Trap, it consists of him singing plain and simply over some delicately plucked guitar, and it’s a thing of beauty.

Album Review: American Music Club – Mercury

When Mark Eitzel and co finally started to get some plaudits (for 1991’s Everclear), a major label deal and a relatively large recording budget, they reacted in the only way they knew how. They enlisted producer Mitchell Froom to make a somewhat difficult album which bore little resemblance in sound to their previous output!

I prefer to call it a subtle album. Those who fell in love with pedal steel guitar player Bruce Kaphan’s contributions to Everclear would be disappointed here, as he is limited to minimal embellishments here and there.

Gratitude Walks is a classic Eitzel song, opening with piano and some steel guitar, before Eitzel croons lyrical gems like “chains on the oasis that leads a man to drink, drunk on the kind of applause that gets louder the lower you sink.” It’s a classic alcoholic insight that needs no explanation. If I Had A Hammer is probably one of the more conventional songs here, again leading off with piano and same great guitar touches. It’s all going along quite nicely till they throw in a weird bleepy bit in the middle, before Eitzel continues on the theme of the last song, singing “I don’t know if I’ve reached the bottom yet… I feel time pass like a joy I tried so hard to relearn, but somewhere along the line I passed the point of no return.”

Challenger is a total change of pace, with Vudi’s raging, murky guitars before we’re back in familiar territory with I’ve Been A Mess. This song is almost self-parody with Eitzel self-flagellating (“I’ve been a mess since you’ve been gone”) over prominent steel guitar. One of my kids said to me once that it sounds just like me singing on guitar!

Most of the rest of songs are reasonably subtle, albeit many of them with lengthy titles (What Godzilla Said to God When His Name Wasn’t Found In The Book Of Life, The Hopes and Dreams of Heaven’s 10,000 Whores), which often bear little relation to the songs themselves. Self-sabotage? If so it’s a thoroughly enjoyable one.

The album is also notable for the presence of Johnny Mathis’ Feet, which is to non-AMC fans, probably the song they are best remembered for. It’s a classic contradiction that it is in fact a fairly atypical song for them, musically at least. It’s pretty much a big ballad, with Eitzel bellowing out a tale of comparing his songs unfavourably with Johnny Mathis, over a big ‘kitchen sink’ style production number which throws in strings, steel guitar and dramatic crescendos.

One of the stranger tracks is the second last one, More Hopes and Dreams, which is a bit of self-indulgence from the band where they recorded sounds from an electrical power station which sounded perfect for the album! The final track, Will You Find Me, is an AMC acoustic-based closer in the vein of Last Harbour from California. It’s downright lovely, with a fragile acoustic guitar riff, sensitive vocals from Eitzel sounding almost at breaking point, and some keyboards which work really well. The middle section with an acoustic guitar solo backed by unconventional guitar work from Kaphan demands to be heard. It’s almost impossibly beautiful, and gives the lie to those who dismiss steel guitar as clichéd country nonsense.

Predictably this sort of stuff did not sell in grunge-era 1993, and from then on American Music Club were doomed to obscurity.

Album Review: American Music Club – Everclear

Apologies for another AMC post, this blog is rapidly turning into the AMC/Smog related blog! This album represented a bit of a change for American Music Club. Released in 1991, it saw them working with a half decent recording budget, which led to a fuller sound. Bruce Kaphan was now a full member of the band, and he pitched in on production, as well as steel guitar duties. Nothing of the subtlety of this band was lost with this change. It’s compounded by the vivid artwork on the cover, a painting by Jean Lowe.

The album starts with Why Won’t You Stay, a lament for a departed lover which drifts in unassumingly, with some heartbreaking lyrics from Mark Eitzel (“in memory of a little girl who was far too much in love with the world, and who didn’t wanna stick around for the end”). Rise follows, which is a bit more of a self-conscious anthem, with a very definite chorus (the fairly un- Eitzel “make it ri-i-ise”). It’s a good song, though it sounds a little dated.

The understated anthem to apathy, Miracle on 8th Street, follows, drifting along in a similar vein to the opener, but Ex-Girlfriend is less oblique, with a hard-hitting, insistent melody and fairly direct lyrics (“day to day life shouldn’t be what it’s all about”… “I guess you got no one to take care of you”) over some great guitar-hero style playing from Vudi.

The usual AMC curveball follows, Crabwalk, a cheesy country song which totally disturbs the mood, until it’s reined back in by the almost smooth The Confidential Agent, which floats along in a similar vein to Miracle, aided and abetted by the subtle steel guitar playing of Bruce Kaphan and some nice keyboards.

The album seems a little smooth up to now, but Sick of Food is angrier, with more great guitar from Vudi, and Eitzel displaying great passion towards the end. He’s angrier still on The Dead Part of You with the refrain “there’s so little of you left”. Royal Café is a gentle country-rock song and it’s followed by the beautiful What the Pillar of Salt Held Up, another sad(ish) song based around a fragile acoustic guitar.

The album resolves wonderfully with final track Jesus’ Hands. It’s basically a drinking song, Eitzel singing “I got a thirst that would make the ocean proud”. There is some really nice mandolin on this one, played by Dan Pearson.

Album Review: American Music Club – California

Warning: this is one of my favourite albums ever, so don’t expect objectivity. American Music Club’s third album, California represented a change in direction from the fuller sound of previous album Engine, with acoustic guitars featuring a lot more prominently this time around. Released in 1988, it starts with Firefly, which heavily features the sound of a pedal steel guitar. Deeply unfashionable at the time, it paved the way for the ‘alt-country’ movement of the early ‘90s. The melody is an easy, vaguely poppy melody. Somewhere follows which is a little more generic, kind of ‘bog-standard’ alternative rock. That is until you listen to the lyrics, singer Mark Eitzel’s key line here is “we’ve got a lot to lose and maybe we can lose it all tonight”.

The heart of the album starts with Laughingstock (sic) which creeps in on a brittle guitar figure. It’s a particularly yearning song, and it, like others on the album are songs to cling to on a dark, sleepless night. Lonely follows, an anthem to self-loathing (key line “if I have to be this lonely I may as well be alone” over a vaguely REM guitar line (played by Vudi).

What spoils the album somewhat is that the production is a little weak, it’s not a particularly strong sounding album, so you really have to listen to the songs to avoid the songs drifting by without noticing them. When you do take the time to listen, Pale Skinny Girl contains some great echoey, distorted electric guitar. Blue and Grey Shirt follows, which is another late-night Eitzel classic. The hopeless yearning here is quite something to behold (key line: “I’m tired of being a spokesman for every tired thing”), enhanced by pedal steel that avoids the usual country pitfalls of cheesiness, before concluding that he “just sing my songs for people who are gone from now on”. It’s heart-breaking stuff.

Bad Liquor is totally out of step with the rest of the album and is a kind of rant over heavy sounding guitars, possible an attempt at a radio-friendly track, but it shatters the mood. The rest of the album returns to an introspective mood, with one classic after another. Now You’re Defeated sees Eitzel lamenting that he “thought there was more to life than finishing a drink”. It’s quite resigned yet the vocal delivery is sung with real passion. Jenny is a Nick Drake-esque acoustic guitar dominated song sung to the aforementioned Jenny who finds herself at “another stupid party again”, sung and played with real sensitivity.

Western Sky contains a wonderful guitar line which soars in, accompanied by a fine vocal performance from Eitzel. It’s kind of celebratory, in a miserable sort of way. Shades of Morrissey on this one, indeed Smiths/Morrissey comparisons could be made on much of this album, particular the following track Highway 5. Eitzel moans agreeably on this one, over some heavily distorted guitars. The final track, Last Harbor is a real dark night of the soul track. Eitzel pours his guts out, singing “falling, falling I don’t see the bottom” over descending, plucked guitar. There’s no coming back after this one.

Much of this album is where the band and Eitzel in particular built their songwriting reputation on. There are songs of real depth here, which reward repeated listening, and Eitzel has continued in this vein for the rest of his career, without commercial achievement, but with great artistic success.