Mark Eitzel was one of the most important rock poets of the 1990s. His career started with American Music Club, a folk-rock group which anticipated the new current of nocturnal singer songwriters, and ended with solo albums. In both Eitzel expressed, with a frank timidness, a solemn existential pessimism. His diction modulated the philosophical tone of Gram Parsons, the grimness of Nick Drake, and the dreaminess of Tim Buckley.

Eitzel was born in San Francisco in 1959 but grew up in Columbus, Ohio. In 1980 he returned to San Francisco to lead a rock group. In short, that formation stabilized into a quartet which took the name American Music Club.

Restless Stranger (Grifter, 1985 - Warner Brothers, 1998) contained imposing, mournful stories of loneliness and nervous depression still marked by stylistic eclecticism of the new wave and perhaps influenced by the new British melodicism. The falsetto lament of Room Above The Club suggested a country-western version by the Smiths, and Yvonne Gets Dumped, a hard-rock version by the same. Eitzel seemed a bit out of place in the emphatic crooning of Tell Yourself, somewhere between the styles of Cure and Nick Cave. The brash tone and martial tempo of $1,000,000 Song seemed as if it had come from the early Talking Heads. The tribal drumming and wild distortions in Mr. Lucky belonged to the punk era. The accompaniment by Mark "Vudi" Pankler on guitar and Brad Johnson on organ was a farm-yard folk-rock with a hint of garage sound.
The true character of Eitzel came to light elsewhere. Atmospheric psychodramas like Point of Desire and Away Down My Street lost their melodic thread and abandoned themselves to the delirium of the singer who "recites" stories, which took place in an atmosphere of cosmic defeat.

Engine (Grifter, 1987) was recorded by a lineup that had profoundly changed, not just due to the loss of Johnson, or his of the permanent entry of guitarist Tom Mallon (who produced the first album), nor the new drummer, but for the new approach to the arrangements. The music was a folk-rock which made use of metered interventions of strings and keyboard to place the focus on the singing of Eitzel. The instrumental interventions were functions of his stories, not the other way around. This emphasized the lyrics instead of the melodies and rhythms. The heart of the album were the delicate domestic tragedies of Big Night - a song so bare as to arouse claustrophobia, of Mom's TV - the most lively and pathetic skit, and of Nightwatchman - with one of the most catatonic atmospheres, often skirting stasis. The faintness of the borders between the dream-like visions and psychedelic hallucinations was evident in tracks like Asleep.
These songs guiding principle is a wise artform of fractured rhythms and a dialectic between instruments and vocals. At times the smooth harmonious stream of consciousness reminders listeners of the most enraptured Van Morrison (especially in At My Mercy). Tracks Outside This Bar (one of the best) and Clouds were of a totally different nature. They had ethereal melodies a' la Morrisey and were underscored by potent distortions of guitar for the riffs. Utterly beyond is the deafening boogie of Art of Love. But even visceral tension of these "rockers" was at the service of the desperate existential malaise of Eitzel. Every note, every chord, every tone, every word, and every pause had the specific task of transmitting anguish.

In California (Grifter, 1988), the folk-rock sound was abandoned for a more austere sound. The introverted litanies of Eitzel went deeper and deeper into the universe of depressed vocalists. This was crepuscular and impressionistic music, immeasurably sad but acutely observant, which, through bringing out the terrible emotions from unhappy personal situations seems to exorrcise those feelings. Eitzel sang in an agonizing whisper, while the rest of the group followed in a background counter-point.
More communicative than usual in Firefly, with a melody sung beautifully at full volume and a languid West Coast sound of "steel" Hawaii-ana. Eitzel once again sank into his dark rumination with the delicate serenade of Jenny, the folk song Lonely, and the dramatic portrait of Pale Skinny Girl. These tracks used first rate melodies but were almost always immersed in modesty- in a harmonic context that was more mature, noble, and elegant, as if a refrain in itself were a vulgar act. Eitzel took advantage of an art form that was refined over the years by Cohen and many other songwriters. The soft cartilage falls away a little with each chord, ending in a dreamlike swoon a' la Tim Buckley (Laughingstock and especially Blue and Grey Shirt), with the surreal atmosphere of Highway 5. The music became pure emotion without any harmonic scaffold to support it.
Within the genre of electric ballads, which the group reinvented, leaving  behind the models of Neil Young and Gram Parsons (the neuroses of the first, the fragility of the second) and carved out Somewhere. Bad Liquor (another classic)is romper of Beefheart style blues, and was as lively as it was oversized. The eclecticism of the group was at its peak, as was the tormented drama of Eitzel. California represented the expressive peak of not just Eitzel but the entire new new school of singer-songwriters. Mallon, who was the protagonist behind the arrangements, left after this album.

After changing drummers again, they produced United Kingdom (Grifter, 1989), which was in theory a collection of leftovers and live tracks. Eitzel, absolute master of sound, created a work with a gloomy mood. In this terrible psychological landscape, his tormented ego frescoes the ruins of Never Mind (with almost imperceptible jazz-soul crooning), Dream Is Gone (a dissonant and chaotic score, a heroin addict’s high), and Kathleen (a duet between a hoarse cry by the singer and yelps on acoustic guitar); tracks in which the degree of musicality was reduced to the bare minimum, but which exude a fiery pathos. Eitzel emerged from the midst of the chords in Here They Roll Down, like Tim Buckley singing a gospel hymn. In the title track he rode obsessive Celtic riffs, like Nick Drake in love with a shadow. He howls and moans like a blues master in The Hula Maiden, one of his masterpieces. The most serene moment was in Dreamers of the Dream - one of his most lilting and melodic country ballads, and Heaven of your Hands, a lyrical serenade.

The arduous spiritual exercise (the self-flagellation type of ritual replicated in the first 4 albums), found an outlet in Everclear (Alias, 1990), partially composed in 1989. The stormy anthem Rise, the slow love song Why Won't You Stay, the novel dance tune Crabwalk, and the angry pleading of Dead Part of You, were by far the easiest tracks of Eitzel's career. The true psychedelic deliriums of The Confident Agent and Miracle on 8th Street, and the nervous ballad Sick of Food (with Pankler's lyrical solo), constituted the link with the older American Music Club. This album does justice  to the many years of misunderstanding, but it was not the group's best. Guitarist Bruce Kaplan joined the group brought a more relaxed tone to the Club with his mellifluous art. Everclear was hailed by critics (who had not heard the preceding albums) as the most important of the year. In reality, it represented a moment of transition for Eitzel, who increasingly performed solo as in Live (Demon, 1991) and sung as well with Toiling Midgets.

The drummer Tim Mooney from Toiling Midgets played on Mercury (Reprise, 1993) and completed what may have been the most mature grouping of American Music Club. The album flaunts a more complex sound in vivacious tracks (Keep Me Around and above all Johnny Mathis' Feet), and in the atmospheric tracks (Hopes And Dreams of Heaven's 10,000 Whores). Several tracks even seem padoric, (especially the waltz Challenger). The lush arrangements of this album demonstrated a surprising lineage from the art-rock group Genesis (Apology for an Accident).

San Francisco (Warner, 1994) continued the evolution begun in Mercury toward a more articulate style, with alternating moments of elegant melancholy (Fearless, Cape Canaveral) to roaring passion (It's Your Birthday, Wish the World Away). American Music Club became a sophisticated soul-rock group, along the lines of Bruce Springsteen, with Eitzel as an artful baritone. Perhaps too ironic and lighthearted (How Many Six Packs), giving Abba a run for their money in the  boogie tune of Hello Amsterdam, the album was devoid of inhibitions and fear: I Broke my Promise was a soul tune a' la Tamla, Revolving Door was filled with disco rhythms, and the like. The lyrics however, offered no compromises: life was a prison and there was no way to escape.

At this point, Eitzel decided to leave the group and go solo. 60 Watt Silver Lining (Warner, 1996) was a disappointment because he chose to sing like an elegant crooner in a cocktail lounge.
In Sacred Heart, Eitzel seemed like a cross between Morrisey, but more moody, and Van Morrison, but more tormented. In Cleopatra Jones, he seemed like Morrisey accompanied by a crafty group of Latino, funk, soul, and jazz sounds. For Saved, he seemed a pupil of Burt Bacharach, accompanied by a jazz trumpet played by Mark Isham. The problem was: why should these masquerades be of any interest to the public? Everything But The Girl was better better at this. The breaks which had always been his forte, became suffocated by the arrangements, as if Eitzel was afraid that he'd sound like himself. In the end he seemed a bit verbose and a little hysterical.
This worked only in a couple of instances, Southend On Sea and Mission Rock Resort, which were also the most lively thanks to the band: the instrumental parts are so tight and refined that one cannot criticize.
The distinctive autumnal atmospheres in Always Turn Away, When my Plane Finally Goes Down, and Some Bartenders were islands in an ocean.
Even the fact that he dedicated almost all his songs to San Francisco becomes a bit annoying.  Could it be that he had nothing left to sing of except for the romantic views and sad events of his home town?

Eitzel collaborated with Pete Buck of REM in West (Warner, 1997). The album was more influenced by Buck than Eitzel: Eitzel wrote songs for guitar and piano while Buck arranged them to his liking. Eitzel deserves credit for abandoning the dull tones of the preceding album, replacing it with a mature balance of diction. A couple of melodies in Stunned And Frozen, a Celtic square dance, count among the top tracks of his career. The main protagonist was the arrangement, with subtle touches of orchestral piano, guitar, vibraphone, violin, marimba, tabla, conga drum, saxophone, and organ. In Your Life, Move Myself Ahead, and Three Inches of Wall were the most catchy and lively tracks of his career.
In the end, this process ended up diluting his stories. However Eitzel found a way around this in Then It Really Happens, in which he created a style just as atmospheric that fits perfectly with the arrangement. It remains to be seen if solo, without Buck's help, he can reconstruct that painstaking mix of arrangements in the future.
Old Photographs and Helium remained faithful to his introverted and melancholy vocal style, and thus If You Have To Ask and Live or Die ran into the same problems as the preceding album, in the dull and soft cocktail lounge jazz atmosphere. Eitzel became prolific: he already had another album ready, Caught In A Trap (Matador), although perhaps too late to allow something greater to come through.

Caught In A Trap And I Can't Back Out Because I Love You Too Much Baby (Matador, 1998) is an album of mostly acoustic sketches with bitter lyrics, despite the help of guitarist Kid Congo Powers (Cramps, Gun Club), drummer Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) and bassist James McNew (Yo La Tengo). Six songs have nothing else to commend themselves than Eitzel's warm and mournful baritone and his plain guitar chords. Sun Smog Seahorse is tenderly unsettling and White Rosary is profound, but it is telling that the standout tracks are the other five: the suicidal If I Had A Gun, the atmospheric Go Away, the melodramatic Cold Light Of Day, the tense Queen Of No One and Are You the Trash (that well summarizes his negative philosophy with the line "evil gets what he wants").
Honestly, it sounds like an album containing five songs (five of his best songs ever) and six demos.

The Invisible Man (Matador, 2001) is Eitzel's "living-room" album: self-played, self-recorded and self-produced. Somehow, it turns out to be also his debut in electronic arrangements, i.e. his sleekest album. Eitzel weds the persona of an erudite and refined intellectual with the persona of a seasoned lounge crooner in songs such as the desolate The Boy With The Hammer In The Paper Bag (sparse piano notes, floating electronics, skipping dance beats), the luscious Anything (with reverbed piano ticking, orchestral drones and bursts of rhythm), and the dreamy To The Sea, a piano ballad with strummed guitar and trip-hop ambience, sung in a plain conversational whisper. it is certainly intriguing how Eitzel mixes electronic rhythms and acoustic instruments, thus attaining hybrids such as the syncopated raga-downtempo of Steve I Always Knew or the trotting shuffle of Bitterness.
He is more predictable (but perhaps also more charming) with the catchy pop refrains of Seeing Eye Dog, the psychedelic languor of Christian Science Reading Room, and the folkish lullaby Can You See (with pastoral accompaniment of instruments such as harmonium and cello). More eclectic than ever, he concocts soul music that is as light as a feather (Shine), jazzy laments a` la Tim Buckley (Without You), folk-rock rants in a Dylan-esque style (Proclaim Your Joy).
The collection is uneven, to say the least. Eitzel can always be musically intriguing, but not always lyrically interesting. He probably thinks too much of his lyrics to give everything he could in his music.

Music For Courage And Confidence (New West, 2002) is a (terrible) collection of covers.

Ugly American (Thirsty Ear, 2003), that reinterprets some of his classics (arranged by a Greek ensemble), marks a return to the sophisticated pop of West. The orchestral flourishes (that echo of traditional Balkan music), bagpipes that buzz like bees, etc. grant Eitzel's streams of consciousness a curious feeling of "no man's land".

1984-1995 (2004) is an American Music Club retrospective (with, alas, rarities).

American Music Club reformed (Mark Eitzel, Dan Pearson, Tim Mooney, Mark "Vudi" Pankler, and newcomer multi-instrumentalist Marc Capelle instead of Kaplan) and released Love Songs For Patriots (Devil In The Woods, 2004), but the album is more a showcase for Eitzel's (mediocre) lyrics than for the band's music. Despite the over-production of some songs (Job to Do, Only Love Can Set You Free, lengthy closer The Devil Needs You), and the relaxed charm of opener Ladies and Gentlemen (which don't seem to fit with the rest of the collection), the sociopolitical allegory of Song of the Rats Leaving the Sinking Ship and the mood-sculpting of the Nick Cave-esque dirge Patriots Heart, of Another Morning and of Love Is rely on the lyrics to deliver a message that is perhaps beyond the means of the lyricist. The bleak introspection of classic AMC is here replaced by a vehement denunciation of the public sphere; but one thing is to whine about one's unhappy condition and one thing is to try to make sense of geopolitics and history. Eitzel is no Shakespeare, and he is certainly no Thucydides. The album fails in its basic goal: the reconstruction of American mood after a traumatic election, September 11, the Iraqi war and another traumatic election. Eitzel was pessimistic during America's best decade ever. Now it's a bit difficult for the bard who missed the decade of peace and prosperity to catch up with the decade of war and unemployment.

Mark Eitzel's Candy Ass (Cooking Vinyl, 2005) offers an odd combination of folk-tinged tracks and electronic tracks. Unfortunately, neither the idea nor the songwriting justify the album.

American Music Club's Golden Age (Merge, 2008), that paired Mark Eitzel and Vudi with new bassist Steve Didelot and drummer Sean Hoffman, avoided the political pitfalls of the first reunion album and stuck to crafting gentle, pensive, well-arranged, harmless country-rock for aging punks. The new strategy yielded two powerful existential sermons, The Windows on the World and Decibels and Little Pills, and a silly singalong, All the Lost Souls Welcome You to San Francisco.