Ladies & gentlemen, it's time. After 10 years, American Music Club have released a new album. I got to know AMC when Everclear came out and since then, I've lost my heart to this band. When they decided to call it quits, it felt like an old friend telling you he was going to live on the other side of the world.
Of course you agreed to keep in touch. So, you listened to the old records and the solo albums that leadsinger/songwriter/guitarist Mark Eitzel released the past ten years. Good records, with a little help from such fine folk as Peter Buck, Barrett Martin, Kid Congo Powers, Steve Shelley,... Nevertheless, it was never quite the same. When I read the news that Eitzel had brought the band back together again to do a new album and I heard the demo version for Ladies & Gentlemen, it was as if that old friend turned up on my doorstep all of a sudden.
Ladies & Gentlemen, the opening track of Love songs for patriots is more menacing then the demo revealed and it is exemplary to what AMC does with Eitzel's songs: they add that little extra something that makes the difference between, let's say, a good blended whisky and a single malt. Speaking of which, Eitzel's lyrics still linger around in seedy bars and bad booze (Patriot's Heart), loss and desperation (Another Morning), but also hope and love (Only love can set you free). Although not quite as explicit as in the "old days" (e.g. Kathleen, the first time I could actually hear somebody's heart being ripped apart by love), the writing is more poetic (Bukowski?) nowadays, Eitzel can still convey and phrase feelings like no one else can.
His fellow musicians in AMC (Dan Pearson (bass), Tim Mooney (drums), Vudi (guitar)) make it all the more spellbinding, taking bits & pieces from folk, country, rock, soundscapes and what-have-you and ProTooling it into the 21st century. You can find elements of everything they have ever done before in the new songs. From the "acousticism" of California, to the craftsmanship of Mercury. Albums that provided them with the respect and admiration of fellow musicians (Calexico, Pearl Jam,...) and also the critics loved them (Eitzel won Rolling Stone Magazine's Songwriter of the year-award for Everclear). Unfortunately, only a few people actually went out and bought the records...
So, "ladies & gentlemen, it's time for the good that's in you to shine" and get this new album. Hopefully you'll love it, you could possibly even hate it, but I promise you that you won't stay indifferent to this music. And that, ladies & gentlemen, is a rare quality these days.
P.S.: AMC will probably play the AB, Brussels in December!!!