Review: Mark Eitzel, The Invisible Man
Recorded twice with a variety of musicians and producers, The Invisible Man is in the uncomfortable position of being the most anticipated album of Eitzel's career. Infamously tagged by NME as "our greatest living songwriter." Eitzel has never had a problem convincing critics of his stripes (even the disappointing Peter Buck collaboration West was garnered with generally favorable reviews), but the record buying public and record companies have been another matter. With each release by American Music Club and, later, his solo outings, falling on the deaf ears of the public, and his sales slipping further into unprofitability, Eitzel was unfortunately dropped by Warner Brothers in 1998, quashing reported plans to deliver two albums entitled Whitehall and I'm Not Afraid of Rainclouds, I'm Not Afraid of Rain, I'm Gonna Live Forever. The intervening years have seen Eitzel attempt a live AMC reunion, and then rejuvinate his live shows with a revolving band including former AMC guitarist Vudi, keyboardists Marc Capelle and Kristin Sobditch, a host of drummers and the occassional bassist. The live shows became slicker, the band tighter, the songs more accomplished and beautiful, and Eitzel delivered some of the most professional shows of his career in tiny venues around San Francisco during the years of 1999 and 2000. During this same time, an album was recorded with this band without label backing, and produced by Jason Carmer, but financial and aesthetic concerns led to that version (legendarily entitled The Eyes are the Floodlights of the Mole, at least for a few minutes) being ditched a year ago.

The Invisible Man as finally released has been largely re-produced and partially re-recorded in a home studio, with Eitzel playing many of the instruments himself; he also sequenced and arranged the results with ProTools. In addition to the contributions of various band members, a surprising amount of sequenced drum patterns and keyboards fill out the sound. Eitzel was quoted a few years back as saying he'd yet to make his trip-hop electronica masterpiece, and there's an aphorism in indie circles that you can't get signed to Matador these days if you aren't an electronic band. Is The Invisible Man Eitzel's electronica move, shrewdly calculated to fit in with Matador's current roster of Cornelius and Matmos?

No. The Invisible Man is a weird album, to be sure, and one that challenges the listener's assumptions, but it's also the most assured and artistically satisfying solo album Eitzel has released. Listened to from beginning to end, The Invisible Man delineates a curious psychological journey out of grief and into acceptance of life, and the musical arrangements, often relying on the interplay of acoustic and electronic instruments, rise to the occasion, contributing an aire of surreal detachment from the often harrowingly honest and emotional lyrical pronouncements of loss.

Opening the album on a strong note, "The Boy with the Hammer in the Paper Bag" is an eerie narrative that meanders along a bizarre "Shaft"-inspired groove. Eitzel is at his metaphoric and impressionistic best, detailing the events of a very odd party, or hazily reconstructing the memories of a night of serious drinking. When the partygoers react to the house fire next door with uncontrollable laughter, Eitzel dismisses it with the comment "too fucked up to feel anything," which sets the tone of disconnection that recurrs throughout the album. Ending the song with a possibly sincere, possibly snide "boo hoo hoo, I'm really gonna miss you," the subject of derision and the speaker aren't easily distinguishable from one another.

Bright, sunny, and acid-tinged, with it's opening bars tipping the hat to "Strawberry Fields", "Can you see?" evokes Salako and Belle and Sebastian with a breezy bass clarinet and programmed military snare beat beneath forthright love lyrics. The inclusion of Stereolab-esque "ba ba" backing vox that leave a lasting impression; they don't sound so much out of place in the arrangement as they sound uncharacteristic of Eitzel, and they're an early sign that The Invisible Man is an album that will confound the expectations of those familar with Eitzel's back catalog.

"Christian Science Reading Room," a psychedelic exploration of pot smoking and sudden feline religious conversion, sustains the mood created by "Can You See?" before the album takes a turn into more familiar Eitzel lyrical territory.

"Sleep"'s sung melody line progresses oddly, contrasting with the contrapunctal organ noodling beneath it. A variety of backward guitar loops fill out the ambient sound, and a sampled beat pitter-patters out half a measure then vanishes before the obvious finish. "Shine," presented live in a variety of poppy arrangements, makes its recorded debut as a lazy Sea-and-Cake-ish jazz piece, easily the most successful version of the song. "Steve I Always Knew," already released on Lover's Leap USA four years ago, resurfaces transformed into a downtempo tour de force. Eitzel's whispered frank detailing of a failed love affair carries a heavy Everything But the Girl influence, to its advantage (It's worth noting that the line "outside I'm hard as a brick, inside I'm light as a feather," which Eitzel almost always derided live with "I hate that fucking line", has been ditched).

The album centers around three back-to-back songs that exemplify the complicated emotions of the record. "Bitterness," with it's candid refrain of "I don't think that I will ever love again," is plainly spoken over a swinging, Tipsy-infused calpyso, underscored with a wiggly synth line (written by Vudi). The end result is nearly Radiohead-esque in its impersonalization. Lyrically, "Anything" is one of Eitzel's most remarkable and direct love songs ever, a epitaph for a departed loved one, which hinges on the declaration "I'd give anything to be where you are." It's Eitzel's most touching sentiment, but rather than use the approach he did with, say, "Western Sky," he's held back, just barely singing the words (but not daring to move into mumbles, which would have been too much), and arranged the music so that song builds on a brittle composition of drum samples. It's made all the more forceful by his restraint and stands as one of Eitzel's most powerful songs. Concluding the sequence, "Without You" is the only song on the album where Eitzel lets loose with his AMC-era full throated vocals, and the song recalls "Cape Canaveral" with it's flourish of horns and lush chamberlain and organ. Eitzel hasn't sequenced tracks this with this much emotional complexity since the final tracks of California.

"The Global Sweep Of Human History," featuring the old "Vudi soup" guitar atmospherics that marked Everclear, features some of Eitzel's finest lyrics to date and the tight ensemble playing that made his list sets of 1999 so special. "Seeing Eye Dog," though it might carry the metaphor of its title a little far, has such a strong sense of melody that you can't really hold anything against it.

Finishing the album, "It is Important Throughout Your Life to Proclaim Your Joy", the "international hit" promised by Matador's one-sheet, is a bizarre pastiche of ProTools quick edits and strangely off-key, barked backing vocals. A piss-take of that modern radio hit formula, the "list" song (ala "It's the End of the World as We Know It", "We Didn't Start the Fire", etc), Eitzel deliniates a dadaesque series of dubious attributes (some hate and murder, some bake the bread, some pump tummies, etc) over a basic three cord structure spiced up with a Vudi country guitar solo and a sampled burping noise. Reminiscent of "Crabwalk" but even stranger, with oddly edited choruses and a tacked on, muttered coda, it's at least as likely to be thrown through an AAA radio station window as it is to be played; marketing the song as a single might be the most punk rock move Eitzel has made since the Naked Skinnies. It's a real triumph of an album closer, the only possible conclusion to the dark ride that came before.

If there's a song that doesn't quite succeed on all levels, it's the tribute to Jeff Buckley, "To the Sea," which had been a full-throated rocker in Eitzel's live set. Here, Eitzel's voice is buried beneath a distracting and not very original programmed rhythm, and here his reluctance to let rip vocally seems at odds in a tribute to a singer who certainly never held himself back. The liner notes claim "blame Eitzel for everything here; slightly blame Kid Congo Powers," but the reasoning behind this arrangement is a mystery to me and it makes me yearn for the live versions.

It will be interesting to see what the public reaction to this album is; clearly Eitzel's heart and soul infuse every note the album, but he's executed in a manner much different than anything he's ever done before. The mixing, by Eitzel, Chris Davidson, and Alex Oropeza (formerly of Tarnation), works well, but one is left wondering what this album would have sounded like if Matador had shelled out for the likes of John McEntire or Jim O'Rourke. But that Matador has taken the album that Mark recorded by himself, and released it in accordance with his wishes and without imposing their own restrictions on it, is an enormous gift of generosity and faith. Eitzel is signed to a three album deal and has already recorded demos for the next record, for which we hopefully won't have to wait nearly as long. With Matador he has the benefit of not having the bizarrely unrealistic sales expectations that WB foisted on him, and he's gained a certain elevated profile via the indie label's laurels.

It's worth noting that Eitzel has finally but I Failed In Life to rest; his new publishing imprint is Eitzelsuperhits International. The Invisible Man is a watershed in Eitzel's career as a songwriter; the "barroom troubadour" tag that's followed him around for too long should really fade away. This is a confident and exceptional work of songcraft that hopefully will be evaluated on it's own merits.

Labels: american music club, mark eitzel, reviews