San Francisco

American Music Club: Bruce Kaphan (vocals, guitar, pedal steel, keyboards, tablas); Danny Pearson (vocals, guitar, mandolin, bass); Tim Mooney (vocals, guitar, drums); Mark Eitzel, Vudi (vocals, guitar).
Additional personnel: Bill Ortiz (trumpet); Omewenne (background vocals).
Producers: Joe Chiccarelli, American Music Club.
Recorded at Studio D, Sausalito, California; Mobius Music and Hyde St. Studios, San Francisco, California.
SAN FRANCISCO was AMC's final album, as leader Mark Eitzel quit the band before it ever received the inevitable boot from Reprise for disappointing sales. Produced by Joe Chiccarelli, who mixed the beauteous EVERCLEAR, it combines that album's lushness with the sophisticated, overdub-heavy arrangements of MERCURY. Characteristically, the band opens with a ballad, "Fearless," a touching, straight-ahead love song (!) that ranks among AMC's finest works. "Can You Help Me" and "I Broke My Promise" incorporate the band's burgeoning interest in R&B in the service of Eitzel's typically self-effacing lyrics.
A low-key rhythmic throb that's nearly danceable (not to say funky) runs through the otherwise downhearted "The Revolving Door" and the absurdist poetics of "How Many Six Packs Does it Take to Screw in a Light." The rocking "Hello Amsterdam," a humorous account of the group's failure to impress the Dutch, is as close as AMC comes to accessibility. The harrowing acoustic ballad "The Thorn in My Side Is Gone" bears the naked emotional honesty of John Lennon's finest solo work, while the hazy, surrealistic "In the Shadow of the Valley" and "What Holds the World Together" find the band at its most impressionistic, foreshadowing Eitzel's subsequent solo career.