American Music Club, with Expassionates and Olympic Size
May 5, 2008
The Record Bar
Better Than: Going to bed alone and waking up with a stranger
By SCOTT WILSON
Click photo to view slideshow
American Music Club songwriter and frontman Mark Eitzel has a voice like rancid caramel and a borderline-autistic stage presence. Which makes him the perfect delivery system for songs of drunken egress and sexual grief — his songs. The work of an archangel of regret. His voice, riding the accidentals and transcending sharp or flat to become pure, keening tone, is the wail of a monkey exhorting us to let down our tails and return to the trees, where we belong. But if people drove away from the Record Bar last night instead of nesting above the savanna, it wasn't for lack of understanding between artist and audience.
Eitzel's lyrics suggest a kinship to poet and fellow San Franciscan August Kleinzahler, who also knows his way around barrooms and dry abstraction (and is the same age as Eitzel). The simmering, nauseous tension in the music of songs such as “The Windows on the World” (Monday night’s most unhinged moment, from the band's new album, The Golden Age) shadows the singer around each corner. Eitzel doesn’t so much sing a melody as drag the band forward like a circus strongman pulling a boxcar on a chain. The resulting scrape — the coiled torque of guitarist Vudi’s metallic washes and the crouched fury of Eitzel’s own voice — does as much to separate AMC from its peers as Eitzel’s shot-glass-laureate narrators.
Most of the band’s hourlong set (including an encore for which band and audience sounded equally grateful) emphasized The Golden Age and the most similar material from AMC’s last two major-label albums. “Wish the World Away” and “The Revolving Door,” from 1994’s San Francisco, sounded more vital and lived-in than their album versions, and a soaring “Johnny Mathis’ Feet,” the flop-sweat farce from 1993’s nightmarish Mercury, eclipsed all but the last number. That final song, a just-Eitzel-and-Vudi reading of “Jesus’ Hands,” the closing-time mission statement from 1991’s Everclear, stopped the clock in darkness. Outside the Record Bar, it wasn’t even 1 a.m. For a little while inside, 3 a.m. showed no sign of advancing toward dawn, and there were no complaints.
The crowd owed some of its swelling to second band Olympic Size, celebrating the release of its debut CD and a smart berth between well-matched acts Expassionates and AMC. Never less than listenable onstage, Olympic Size too often sounded like six musicians playing Mazzy Star records instead of instruments and one trombone player playing a trombone. Eitzel's warm shout-out to the band was heartfelt, but Olympic Size could take a lesson from AMC's more forceful approach to personal, idiosyncratic material.
Critic's Notebook
Personal Bias: On a road trip to Minneapolis in the late summer of 1993, my travel companion, a onetime college-radio hero with lifetime superior taste, played a promo sampler of AMC's then-current Mercury. The first thing I did in Minneapolis was buy a copy of Mercury.
Random Detail: Before the show, Eitzel told me the previous night's gig, in Springfield, was a disaster. "There were only 15 people there," he said. Was this the man's usual comic self-effacement or an unsparing indictment of rural Missouri's way with a quasi-legendary underground act? Probably both.
By the way: New AMC bass player Sean Hoffman reminded me of Dirty Harry psychopath Scorpio. In a good way.
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Yes, Mark Eitzel was awesome as usual. Although the version they did of Hello Amsterdam (Hello Kansas City) was weak. The only real stinker of the night.
Olympic Size = Mazzy Star? C'mon man, work a little harder than that. Sure there are similarities in ambience at times, but not close enough to justify such a glib comment. They're one of the more refreshing bands here in KC and deserve a little more time on your part. It's interesting that what you write O.S. should do - "Olympic Size could take a lesson from AMC's more forceful approach to personal, idiosyncratic material"- is part of why some of AMC's newer stuff is starting to sound redundant,lackluster,long-winded and watered down compared to their older material. As a songwriter Mark Eitzel is becoming too idiosyncratic, too personal thus not writing songs with "universal" appeal: greats like "Jesus' Hands," or "Johnny Mathis' Feet."
Oh yeah, I've seen Mark Eitzel in Austin (Music Kapitol of the World) at the Cactus play to about 2o to 25 people, so maybe there are off nights everywhere and it doesn't have anything to do with Missouri. And that is coming from a Texan.
Here's another "by the way": The drummer looks like Jason Harper's little brother.
American Music Club is a classic American (duh) mostly indie rock band. American Music Club entertained its large audience with songs old and new, as well as some humorous anecdotes. The started out rocking hard with "Hello Amsterdam" from 1994's San Francisco before mellowing out into the beautiful ambiance that has come to define American Music Club.
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