 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
164.71.1.148
A friend of my son recently turned me on to this west coast band. A search of the entire asylum found not one mention of this excellent outfit led by singer/songwriter Mark Eitzel. Pick your favorite stupid monicker bandied about for this music--"art rock", "adult rock", "sadcore", "art punk"....they all fall short at describing Eitzel's generally morose yet humorous compositions framed by a band with a firm grip of advanced folk, rock, and pop styles.The only album I've heard so far is 1993's "Mercury", which is full of consistently strong songs and finely filigreed arrangements. The band was defunct for a while, but Eitzel has recently reconstituted the group and they are touring the US in support of a new album right now--and in small rooms at ridiculously low prices. It's a shame that music of this caliber languishes almost completely unknown, overshadowed by those the ilk of the sickeningly overexposed Amy Winehouse. Highly recommended.
dh
Edits: 03/07/08Follow Ups:
Glad to see some attention paid to AMC here on AA. Fantastic band. I have to agree that Everclear is probably the one that tops the list, but all of their stuff is worth listening to--California, Mercury, San Francisco, and the two newest ones being nearly as essential. Eitzel's first solo CD (60 Watt Silver Lining) is really good too.
.. as for AMC I love 'San Francisco' but never really explored anything else. There is just so much good music in the world to get through !
"The world is held together by the wind that blows through Gena Rowland's hair"
"There is just so much good music in the world to get through !"
Shhhhh! Don't let some of the people on these boards hear you saying that. Just repeat after me; Nothing worth listening to has been released since the seventies.
.... I hadn't dipped my toe in water here for six years until recently. I swear some of the threads were still on the go !!
Listen to more good and varied music in the last twelve months than I ever have !
Couldn't agree more with you on great music. I think it's a fantastic time for new, interesting artists. Freeing artists from the constraints of major labels, has been a very liberating thing for music.
Yeah, great band. It's good to see that they're touring again. You should also check out "California", "San Francisco" and "Love Songs For Patriots", all worth a listen.
I'm definitely interested in getting more of their albums. "Everclear" is supposed to be the best one according to most of what I've read. Any opinions on which you like best and why? Thanks.
dh
Everclear has got to be their best. Lots of variety in the songs. Eitzel's voice was at its peak and the entire thing has an energy that was quickly lost on their heavily (over)produced major label releases. Rise could have been a pop hit and The Dead Part of You was a lyrical masterpiece.
They were great live as well -- I probably saw them about 15 times throughout the '80s. And Eitzel was maybe even better when he did his solo shows.
My favorite is actually "Love Songs For Patriots". I love the sound of the album, and I think Mark Eitzel's lyric writing is particularly sharp on this record. YMMV.
I just found out the Detroit-area show in April at the Pike Room in Pontiac has been scrapped. Looks like I won't get to see them this time around. Maybe there will be a next time.
dh
More than likely there will be a next time, even if it's only a few cities, if they're losing a date in a market like Detroit, there'll be a do-over, probably.
Gotta tell you, though, I'm not sure why bringing Amy Winehouse into it makes any sense. It's apples & pizza. I have a couple of AMC recs & I've heard one of Eitzel's solo recs & it's good stuff, no doubt, but, nearly 15 years later, 'Gratitude Walks' is really the only song that still stands out for me. Now, I haven't pulled the recs out in awhile, but I think that says something in itself, & I dig the stuff. It's not the fault of Amy Winehouse's music that she or it is overexposed, and I daresay that 'Me & Mr. Jones' will shine far brighter for me in 15 years than anything Eitzel will ever do. And that's not a slam on him, not at all. But, honestly, when it comes to the mopey stuff, I'm far more a fan of Nick Cave, and probably some of the earlier Smiths recs as well. Eitzel has skills, no doubt. But the Winehouse slam seems just a bit gratuitous here. I'm not going to jump in every time someone slams her for this or that reason, but you're an asset to this board, so I wanted to pipe up. I wouldn't hold Back To Black up against this or that record, but it's a pop record in a soul idiom by a singer-songwriter with jazz influences (and I still reject the Billie Holiday comparisons, especially when Madeleine Peyroux's work invokes Holiday for me far more; if anything, perhaps Winehouse is more a case of Holiday's phrasing, but with a voice that sounds closer to me, to, say, Nina Simone, with the overall effect bringing it closer to Etta James...something like that. But getting bogged down in the comparisons becomes pointless, as well as keeping it a jazz discussion, when it shouldn't really be). Some people hear the singing & hear it as a jazz rec, but it's not. It's just a pop record, a silly pop record. And it's a great example of how good silly pop music can be.
What do you think of Nick Cave in contrast to Eitzel?
I don't know much about Nick Cave, so I guess that's another to go on the list of "to check out".
I should clarify the Winehouse comment since it does have personal relevance for me. My wife picked up Back To Black after being intially impressed with Winehouse. Personally, I think she is just OK at this point in her life, and between the enormous accolades heaped upon her and her personal habits I tend to think that her career, if not her life, is probably already just about over. There was potential there, but it's probably already been ruined by huge rewards to a petulant personality. So far, she's made two records. The 4 or 5 tracks I've heard from the first album would indicate that her writing was lame in the extreme at that point and her singing not so special either. That anyone would call this a "jazz" album (and it is billed as such on her website) is beyond ridiculous. Back to Black is far better, but Winehouse's own songwriting is still very much at a high school level--lyrics, melody, and harmony--with the strongest composition, "Tears Dry On Their Own" being little more than a ripoff of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" with a new melody and lyrics. "Some Unholy War" is probably her best work vocally and compositionally on the record, and the third best thing on the record for me is "He Can Only Hold Her". In the latter case, co-producer of the demo, P*Nut has successfully sued Winehouse for co-writing credit. At least the Winehouse team had enough sense to avoid legal action from Ashford and Simpson by crediting their (dominant) role in "Tears". For me, the rest of the album is forgettable--Motown/Northern Soul redux (right down to the recorded sound) barely updated with drums mixed up front on a few tracks for a touch of hip-hop sound and lyrics that are cloyingly juvenile far too much of the time.
So what has this got to do with Mark Eitzel or American Music Club? I guess the common thread is alcohol. If it weren't for booze, neither of these people would be the writers they are, and Winehouse would in fact have precious little left to write about except illegal drugs and bitterly poisonous relationships with men as sleazy as she is. Now, these two probably do not hang out in similar bars, but even if they did they would find entirely different things there. Read the lyrics of Eitzel's "What Godzilla Said To God When His Name Was Not Found In The Book of Life" next to Winehouse's "Rehab". Winehouse's writing reads like that of a high school dropout (which it is) whereas Eitzel comes off like the holder of a Master's degree. Eitzel is a master of metaphor where Winehouse barely seems to understand what metaphor even is--on this track or any other for that matter. And while Eitzel has had his share of problems even in public, the litte footage I've managed to find would indicate he tends to be able to stay sober enough for his gigs to not sound like total shit in front of his fans.
Beyond this, I more or less "discovered" these two artists over the course of two or three consecutive weeks. After listening to the Winehouse disc many times over a week or two, I was handed AMC's "Mercury" and very quickly found myself wondering why I had even contemplated bothering to write a review of Winehouse's disc on this forum. The reason of course, was to counter what I still feel is a
ridiculous number of glowing reviews for what I feel is a very mediocre album--certainly not the paragon of freshness and originality it's being hailed as. But now, writing about Winehouse at all feels like a waste of bandwidth when others who are so much better go almost totally unrecognized. Perhaps Eitzel too would have self-destructed under the weight of such success and praise.
So, valid or not, that's pretty much the source of my comment. Hope that clears things up a bit.
dh
We came at this record from very different places. I received a sampler with the first 3 songs on the rec & liked it enough to purchase the album on iTunes last April, the first album I bought after using the ITMS for 3 years already at that point. Although the message in the hit is obvious, this was months before any tabloid headlines. Actually, by the time that started up, the album was by far the most-played on my then-new iPod. But, more significantly, I didn't have the lyric sheet, which you seem to have looked at intently in forming yr views on the rec (which is not to say that yr approach is not valid in any way, mind you; but it wasn't something I had the opportunity to do). I tend to hear music before lyrics, and I was, and remain, very impressed with Me and Mr. Jones, which has has chord changes and both lead and backup vocals that I consider to be higher than a high school level.
I wasn't aware of the legal dispute on one of the songs, nor the credit to A&S. Of course one can hear similarities there. But originality can be thorny sometimes. I don't consider it essential, or anything close, for me to like something. Unoriginal and good better than original and not good, blah blah blah. I once wrote a song myself & played it for a friend, who pointed out I'd lifted a good portion of the verse from a fairly obvious Buddy Holly tune. It hadn't occurred to me at all. Embarrassing. Right? Well, George Harrison's plagiarism issue still seems pretty obvious (as a matter of fact, a critical listen of the Beatles BBC Sessions rec from 14 years ago yields at least a couple of very obvious lifts from the toons of others that I've never seen them criticized for), and Led Zeppelin's downright obnoxious. But there's only so many slices to the pie when it comes to pop songs, and fifty years down the line, when you hear something done well, again, originality is far less a concern to me. And this rec was done well, to my ears. Maybe I would've thought a little less of it if I'd had a lyric sheet from the beginning, but, honestly, I've seen far worse. I mean, there's nothing offensively bad about it, or anything.
As for AMC, by the time I heard them, I'd been hearing stuff in the same vein for 10 years by that time. And I think I reached critical mass with the style, to an extent, as it's not my preferred style. I like plenty of gloomy stuff, morose mopers, depressed-sounding singer-songwriters, literate drunks, but while there's nothing quite like introspection or even social commentary, there's nothing like a three-minute pop gem, either.
I mentioned the Smiths, whose early stuff I'd rate much higher than AMC if for no other reason than Johnny Marr's extremely original and fresh approach to the guitar (one of the most underrated guitarists of the recent past to my ears). But then there's the songs--and though I do still kinda like AMC, it's hard to top stuff like 'Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want' & even 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now.' (See the Hatful Of Hollow album, if not their first, for this band at their best)
Nick Cave was my other obvious mention, but his earlier material can be rather inaccessible (his greatest hits rec is a good starting point, as is Murder Ballads; take a look on YouTube for 'Red Right Hand' and 'Where The Wild Roses Grow'). The inaccessibility, which gradually started to melt away about 20 years ago, makes sense if you've ever heard any of his work with the Birthday Party, easily the darkest and most unpleasant music by a band even vaguely in the rock genre that I've heard...at least without going towards the atonal, the avant-garde, or extreme forms like extreme subgenres of hardcore & metal, such as death metal or 'grindcore' or some such headache-inducers. There's only so much similarity that can be drawn, but like I said I don't reach for AMC all that much, but I'll never stop listening to Cave's best work, which for my money has mostly been done in the past 15 years or so.
I listened to Joy Division for years, one of the first bands that made music that I see as having led to the work of guys like Eitzel. I'm not trying to reduce anyone's estimation of his ability by virtue of pointing to a few acts that might not even necessarily be influences, but there is kind of a general melancholy that I think can be traced back to bands like JD, and also some of Neil Young's darker moments. Although... if you take a look on All Music Guide, I think there are a few 'similar' acts named that I don't think belong there at all--The Replacements? Nah. Sugar, definitely, and Bob Mould's solo work as well, although I wouldn't say Husker Du: the lyrics, absolutely, but not the music, especially Mould's songs, many of which are rather musically inaccessible. And then there were bands like the Sisters Of Mercy & Red Lorry Yellow Lorry...and some other stuff that more contemporary acts like Interpol drew from.
Again, having heard what I thought was enough of this sort of stuff is why I just don't hear Eitzel as tops in his field, all the more so since Young & also Bob Dylan are still putting out very decent, perhaps even great, records. There's only so many hours in the day. Eitzel could be the greatest lyricist since Dylan, or Cole Porter, or whatever name you want to mention, and that's great, but, getting back to the beehived skank, like I said, silly pop music isn't something that automatically has to be viewed as inferior just because one guy's a tremendous poet & the irresponsible, reckless young chick can maybe barely form a coherent rhyme by comparison. I see the appeal in both; but when it comes to what Winehouse is doing, I have to go back a LONG way to pull something out that tops it that's in the same realm, perhaps more than 30 years. When it comes to what Eitzel does, there's a gaggle of outfits & self-conscious substance abusing narcissists who I think have put out work that's just as good.
Maybe if I'd heard him prior to them, I'd be a bigger fan. And I know I'm repeating myself, repeatedly, but there's only so much of that I really want to hear, especially since it seems like I have to fight to find the time to listen to the stuff I really do want to hear--punk rock, jazz, the Beatles & Rolling Stones, Howlin' Wolf & Beck, Stax & Atlantic, Chess & Specialty, Johnny Cash & Patsy Cline, and...this very, very good Amy Winehouse rec (which, I agree, is much better than her first, and neither are 'jazz'). I'm going to make it a point to pull out something by Eitzel sometime in the next few days, and maybe it'll hit me harder than I'll expect. But for a long time I've gotten more punch from guys operating in roughly the same ballpark--a list topped by Cave, but also Bob Mould, especially Sugar. Brainy lyrics have their limits, as even Greg Graffin, PhD, could only elevate Bad Religion's music to a certain point...and, outside of one album (No Control), I'd still rather listen to the Circle Jerks' first record even if lyrically it's like the difference between Hemingway and MAD Magazine.
The combination of great lyrics and great pop music is something that's become increasingly difficult over time as more & more people, so many of them hacks, have to compete with more & more history. It's a limited form...and I like it that way. If I want Eitzel's exquisite works, I know where to find them; but when I do, I won't be disappointed if I were to somehow pull the Winehouse rec out instead by mistake. It flies higher in its genre than anything I've heard from Eitzel, in his. And that's not a knock on him. In the past 25 years or so, in their respective genres, he has what I consider to be far stiffer competition.
| FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
