American Music Club reviewed
American Music Club
The Golden Age
(Merge)
The second American Music Club album since their 2004 revival shows what happens when someone wakes too early from their nap.
Appearing: Saturday, April 12th at Schubas in Chicago.
When AMC landed on their moniker, the joke was supposedly to find something bland as a cheeky bit of college rock irony. But The Golden Age, their ninth, enters under the proposition of a “simple record,” an “antidote to cynicism and irony” and unfolds as something pleasant if nondescript. Vidu and Mark Eitzel look to reclaim what Pernice Brothers stole; “The Decibels And The Little Pills” and “All The Lost Souls Welcome You To San Francisco” breeze through sleepy melodies on the winds that blew them from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. But then Golden gets downright cranky. “The Windows On The World” drops an F-bomb to break up its mellow, presaging the caffeine headache of “One Step Ahead” and an ocean of tumult that crashes “On My Way.” Eitzel is typically unsettled throughout the affair (he opens the album, “I wish that we were always high”), still it’s nice to have a courtesy nudge to make sure we’re still with him.
— Steve Forstneger
Click here to download “All The Lost Souls Welcome You To San Francisco.”
