Caught in the Carousel

American Music Club

The Golden Age
Merge

I've long wondered why it's always Lazarus who gets the headlines. What about Carl? Henry? Lance? Lance! The average, everyday guys who are never front and center but seem entitled to their own resurrections. It's a point to consider when discussing a disc like American Music Club's latest The Golden Age. AMC gave us one of the most exquisite works of the 1990s with their album Everclear, and then two fine (if unexceptional) albums, followed by a ten-year hiatus. And then, then they come back with the downright mess that was Love Songs for Patriots (an album that seemed to prove that everything associated with Georgie's war -- even the protests -- has been disastrous). That album was full of gruff and anger that seemed ordered from a catalogue. Frustrated? Angry? Feel your voice, your protests, your thoughts are lost in a world that makes sense only on your Myspace page? Take a number.

But now Mark Eitzel's San Francisco outfit has produced one of the finer rebounces across the recent musical landscape. For nothing can offer a greater protest against the loss of a country than for its citizens to reject the communal voice fed to us by media and color codes and lapel pins. Sometimes it's the quiet, the delicate, the personal that, once shared, infuses the fight in those who know there is still something worth fighting for. Yes, I do believe that art -- and American Music Club have long been purveyors of that religion with a capital A -- can motivate the citizenry. There is such grace, atmosphere and melody in songs such as "The Sleeping Beauty," "The Windows On The World," and "The Stars," that one really does believe that we are all brilliant in our own small lives. Then there are the standout tracks like "All My Love," and "All The Lost Souls Welcome You To San Francisco," that remind us what a great master of phrasing Eitzel has become. In the past he has made Bob Dylan sound as pitch perfect and pristine as Pavoratti, but he is now in complete control of his voice. The clipped words have a finality to them in songs like "Decibels and Little Pills": "And you pulled up your blouse/wet girls gone wild/for a crowd that just didn't want to know." And on the more elegant numbers his voice hovers with an elegance he didn't have in previous years when he'd asked his voice to soar.

I can't believe I'm actually using the cover of an album as evidence of a theory, but hey folks, that Patriot mentioned in the previous album's title is now a Revolutionary-era survivor in a lifeboat coming home to take his country back. He's got some gray in his hair, a 5 o'clock shadow, a spyglass and lyricism, and he might just be victorious because, as he's already told us on the penultimate song, "On My Way," he's headed ashore: "From the edges of the world where the waltzes play/I'm on my way." Until he gets here, enjoy the quiet devastation of this album; it's a damned fine work of art.

--Thomas Cooney