Feb 22, 2008  |  By: REBECCA ARMENDARIZ  | COMMENTS     

New album from American Music Club not up to band’s usual burnished sound

When did Mark Eitzel’s Jekyll morph into a waltzing, romantic indie-rock Mr. Hyde? He and American Music Club no longer portray a group of bitter cynics. The quartet’s latest album, “The Golden Age,” yields sweet whispers and acoustic guitar-plucked sentiments.

The band doesn’t hit you over the head with the opening track, “All My Love,” like it has with previous albums. The band’s last release, “Love Songs for Patriots,” opened with a pounding, distorted upright bass line and Eitzel’s signature pain-laced wail on “Ladies and Gentleman.” “All My Love,” however, finds Eitzel delivering his lyrics while exhaling, depriving the listener of his characteristic deep bellow.

This is American Music Club’s ninth album, and the band’s first since 2004. In explaining the softness of it, Eitzel said on the band’s MySpace page, “What will my neighbors in my retirement community think? How will I charm the nurse that tends to me? I want to fill my mouth with sugar and spit it on everyone when I talk. I want to cover the world with chocolate cake icing.”

Eitzel’s cynicism probably stems from his life experience. As a young teen he was a born-again Christian before abandoning religion for alcohol. He’s now a gay man in San Francisco who hardly talks about being gay, but a between-the-lines look at his lyrics and some interpretation potentially leads to more information about his alcoholism, drug abuse and lovers, sometimes prostitutes.

The second track, “The Victory Choir,” thankfully finds Eitzel scrapping an ethereal sound, reaching instead to the bottom of his soul for his thick baritone. The rest of the band, consisting of Vudi (who has, apparently, taken a second job driving a city bus in Los Angeles), Sean Hoffman and Steve Didelot, provides the heavenly harmonies.

On “All the Lost Souls Welcome You to San Francisco,” the band picks up the pace and starts to strut, continuing through the next track, “Who You Are.”

“The Windows on the World” finds Eitzel in characteristic slam-poetry mode, talking in streams about events in real time. He sings, “So he took me to a party for fire eaters. We did drugs in the toilet, yeah. We were so downtown. I said, ‘Will there be a band? God, I hope not.’ Isn’t it beautiful? Doesn’t it feel like the end of the world?”

Ever-present in Eitzel and American Music Club’s works are biting wit, superb and sexy vocals and musical talent (a horn section is notably in attendance throughout), but sadly absent from most of  “The Golden Age” is an upbeat tempo, a drive connecting the tracks and that extra bit of sass.

Also missing from “Age” are the jazz-infused tempos, a consistent use of brush on the snare drum and thumping upright bass lines. Combined with the lack of arrogance dripping from Eitzel’s lips and his transition from moan to mumble, this latest effort fails to live up to expectations set by previous records. “The Golden Age” is still lovably intelligent, though, despite its candied presentation.

The band apparently anticipated criticism and tried to explain its approach in a press release: “Every AMC record is an effort to experiment and extend the range of their expression … this album is full of varied, joyous and generous pop music. Whether or not the world sees it that way is another matter entirely.” And with a footnote like that, it’s certain that Eitzel, through his 20 years of projects and changing band members, still has his charm.