Computer Age

American Music Club
Love Songs For Patriots
Merge 2004

The solo career of Mark Eitzel has not exactly been a success, since American Music Club recorded "San Francisco" in 1994, Eitzel has slowly been creating a series of uneven albums, experimental and strangers who do not have convinced almost no one, changing Musicians, Records and Tone ever closer to achieving the wonderful desolation that fed the American Music Club.
This meeting of 2004, although unexpected, no one really caught by surprise. Eitzel has always known that their best songs were those that were within "California", "Mercury" or "United Kingdom" as it was responsible for interpreting demonstrate heartfelt versions in every performance throughout these years, even some of rewritable these themes in his recent "The Ugly American" (2003), surely also knew that Tim Mooney, Vudi and Dan Pearson were perhaps the best companions to translate correctly the drama that has always characterized his compositions, so this reunion, ten years then, is an event that should not raise the suspicions of others talked meetings, American Music Club are not a group of successful, or they were before, nor will it now is more, his album is out, published by an independent, Merge Records ,
Despite the fact that ten years is a long time, this "Love Songs For Patriots" it is just following the trail of "San Francisco", continuing the slight stylistic evolution from Folk, Rock and Country passages toward more experimental jazz and Pop, a development that in substance is not such as all showed up, to a greater or lesser extent on earlier work of the band.
The sound of this new album is quite typical of the band, based on sinuous and atmospheric orchestrations that host the inimitable voice of Mark Eitzel painful, is missing perhaps the pedal steel Kaphan Bruce, the only original member who has not joined to the project, but the rest is there, with few issues on which Eitzel returns to face his old demons: love, loneliness, the (lack of) hope, over time ...
This latest disc is not as strong as earlier works, there are some issues that make a little lower down our rating a bit, but there are issues that certainly could lie the best of his repertoire, starting with the grandiose "Home" and continuing with really beautiful themes such as "America Loves The Minstrel Show," "Another Morning" or the shocking "Songs of the rats leaving the sinking ship," Mark Eitzel remains a sublime composer, and his lyrics are always full of terrible and evocative images, Always looking for metaphors to describe the flow of emotions in their texts full of intensity.
This "Love Songs For Patriots" is certainly a disc for fans of confessed American Music Club, is a dense and hard disk that can discourage more than one person, but it's also a really beautiful album full of delicious details that put back Mark Eitzel in the way of his best creations, we hope to see you here soon.