AMC plays it safe with music, titles

The Golden…The Golden Age American Music Club Merge Records Rocks like: Damien Rice, Wilco

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As both an album and a track title, “The Golden Age” has been frequently recycled in recent music history.

When American Music Club released The Golden Age, the band became the seventh to revive the name, lining up alongside artists like Bobby Conn, Legendary Pink Dots and Cracker.

Other titles in the band’s catalogue include San Francisco, California, London and Engine. This coupled with the fact that the band calls itself American Music Club suggests that lexical creativity isn’t really a strong suit.

Unoriginal album titles and a bland band name are easy to look past when the accompanying music cooks up something delicious or surprising. But AMC’s The Golden Age is palatable at best.

The album is consistent, well mixed and listenable, but we’ve all heard the drowsy Americana about a million times before. AMC doesn’t even have the excuse of being a rookie band that’s simply mirroring its influences. These little-known indie vets have been around since the mid ’80s.

After a prolific 11-year span, during which the group released seven albums, it closed up shop for 10 years to pursue other interests. In 2004 the band got back together to release Love Songs for Patriots, which earned the members quite a few pats on the back from music critics.

It seems odd that a band that’s been making records for so long would have such little renown. But after listening to The Golden Age it’s not surprising that these guys never really made it big with music fans.

On “All My Love,” frontman Mark Eitzel promises, “I’ll be the match that holds your fire / I’ll be the note that sings from your wire.” Despite being overly frosted with sentiment, the song is actually quite pretty and caters perfectly to Eitzel’s buttery vocals.

A few of the songs have a pleasant country twang to them, reminiscent of early Wilco albums. Twinkling with steely guitar, “The Windows on the World” narrates Eitzel’s experience as a tourist in New York City. On “The Sleepy Beauty,” Eitzel’s gooey vocals stick like day-old maple syrup as he sings verses like “This could be / The last time I see / your beautiful eyes.”

Many songs climax in a chorus that has Eitzel holding out every vowel sound. And when the hook is “all the lost souls welcome you to San Fransisco,” his penchant becomes downright taxing for listeners. That’s a lot of vowels to swallow.

Fusing a jangly guitar and jazzy atmosphere, “Little Decibels and Pills” touches on slightly more innovative ground, but unfortunately, a sappy hook makes this a skip-able track.

The bottom line is, American Music Club isn’t exactly covering any new territory. Fans of the older albums, whoever they are, will find that not much has changed on The Golden Age. If this is truly AMC’s golden age, it’s a little scary to think about where they’re headed from here.