The Golden Age

iTunes Review

After a ten year hiatus, American Music Club reunited for 2004’s Love Songs for Patriots. By the end of 2007, only singer Mark Eitzel and guitarist Vudi were available to soldier on. Adding a new rhythm section, the duo went about making one of the quietest albums of their mostly quiet career. Initially, the group were unusual, appearing long before such slo-core advocates as Low, Red House Painters, Smog and Ida. Their snail’s paced, heavily emoted compositions may have helped inspire the ‘emo’ movement to some small degree, but this San Francisco-based group’s approach has always been more subtly nuanced and psychically ambivalent than most performers who bleed over their music. The Golden Age expresses its rage at right-wing politics (“The Victory Choir”) and memorializes tragedy (“The Windows on the World”), but is best when expressing affirmations of beauty in a world gone ugly (“Who You Are”). Unlike previous releases, Eitzel never strains for a note, but instead sings and fingerpicks quietly in the corner with Vudi adding subtle ambient textures of feedback that rarely screech but gently expand over the austere terrain.