Mark Eitzel ‘Candy Ass’ (Cooking Vinyl)

I am a huge fan of Eitzel, and a huge fan of American Music Club (or AMC, as us seasoned, hardcore types like to say). I say this up front to better couch what I have to say, because - with the best will in the world - Eitzel has a tendency to piss on his chips. If things are going well for the band, or for his solo career (or whatever), you can guarantee he'll do something to stop the world embracing him.

Case in point: AMC were signed to Virgin, they were getting reviews that said things like '”maybe it's AMC's time, maybe - like REM - they're going to be one of those bands that puts out a half dozen great albums before the world finally sits up and takes notice” - and they put out albums for Virgin that - well, were not quite up there with AMC's best. Next: AMC break up. Maybe a decade goes by. They reform and a song - one lovely beautiful aching song - 'Another Morning' - appears on an Uncut magazine CD and - yes, fans thought maybe this is it, maybe this time they really will make the album that will better ‘Everclear’. And then ‘Lovesongs for Patriots’ appears and it's caustic and coruscating and - dammit, really hard work. And 'Another Morning' is the stand out track by a country mile. But that still didn't dent the fervour with which the reformed AMC have been greeted across the globe.

So Eitzel has released ‘Candy Ass’ and if you think Lovesongs for Patriots was hard work, think again. In point of fact, if you thought AMC's ‘Great Britain’ was tough.

What we have here is a collections of songs and instrumentals that favours bleepy-bloopy Four Tet style ambia rather than acoustic-y / guitar-y wistful melancholia. If this has a relation in Eitzel's career it's the doom-laden ‘Caught in a Trap’. Don't get me wrong, there are beautiful, beautiful tunes here - 'Sleeping Beauty' revisits 'Take Courage' to stunning effect, 'Make Sure They Hear' sounds like a deliberate echo of ‘The Invisible Man's’ standout track, 'Can You Hear' and 'Roll Away My Stone' wouldn't have been out of place on his collaboration with Peter Buck, ‘West’. It's just. . . tuneless dirges like 'Cotton Candy Tenth Power' and the almost unforgivably pretentious 'A Loving Tribute to My City' effectively stomp on all that is good with the album. The instrumentals suck. And they go on for about fifty trillion years. There's a defiant lo-fi quality to proceedings - from Eitzel's photographs used to produce the sleeve to the tunes themselves - which sound like they were done in a variety of bedrooms in London and San Francisco and elsewhere.

So - if you've been piqued by all the press AMC have garnered recently and feel ready to jump aboard and see what all the fuss is about - don't start here! This is 'of interest' (and I say that guardedly) to Eitzel fans. If you want to see what all the fuss is about check out the AMC rekkuds ‘Everclear’ or ‘California’, or the Eitzel album ‘60 Watt Silver Lining’. Whatever you do, don't start here!

words: Peter Wild

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