Customer Reviews

Engine

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Actually quite a lot. It's genuinely one of the great undiscovered rock albums of our time. In fact all of AMC's first 4 albums would rank in that list 4 me.

For Engine think REM sound about the time of Document, hard-edged, but considerably darker.

The album opens with Big Night, a stark but quite beautiful song which sets the tone for the rest of the album, quite dark and melancholic.

The album is not without it's lighter moments, although it's very black comedy - the drunken bar rock of "Gary's Song" - 'And if we sit here and drink enough beer, we'll be two inflatable dolls in a hooker's bad dream', and the opening lines to "Outside this Bar" - 'Hospital wouldn't admit you, so we go home again' being notable examples.

'Nightwatchman' and 'This Year' are classic examples of life passing you by songs, 'The Nightwatchman, yeah he's asleep, Nightwatchman, I can't wake him up'.

Clouds and Electric Light are very difficult to listen to, really powerful emotional songs, for instance on Clouds 'You want to get excited, so I'll push you too far'.

If I remember right these songs were written around the time the singer Mark Eitzel's father died, and this comes across very clearly. A difficult listen but ultimately a rewarding one.

Engine is the American Music Club's second album, and it is the first that fully realizes the vision of drunken paranoia, separateness and longing that defines their best output. Such a description can sound pathetic, but it is the strength of this band, and most notably lyricist/vocalist Mark Eitzel, to convey such a pathetic state of mind while maintaining an underlying sense of dignity, and even humor. "Outside This Bar" presents a world where the only safe place is within the predictable confines of the neighborhood bar, but Eitzel's description is decidedly not a place where everybody knows your name. Instead, it is a place to take refuge and escape from the horrors that exist beyond the door that prevents the rays of sun from penetrating his consciousness. "Gary's Song" is just as paranoid, but also funny, as it conveys two loser drunks, only one of whom apparently recognizes the inherent downfall that their inebriation will almost certainly make inevitable. "If you drink too much, you will drown" is the warning refrain, but drunkenness prevails, when he sings, "If we sit here and drink enough beer, we'll be two inflatable dolls in a hooker's bad dream."

The hangover's a bitch, though, and the self-mocking reflection of "Mom's TV" and "Big Night" portray the dark side of irresponsibility and careless revelry. Undoubtedly the two most moving songs here, though, are "At My Mercy" and "Nightwatchman," since they stare unblinking into a void of sadness that no amount of alcohol could possibly quell. All in all, Engine serves as a theme album for bar crawlers and lonely hunters who believe they'll find romance in the night, but always wake up feeling more lonely than before they started.
A Tom Ryan

I am too close to this album to review it... I'll just say that if you find complete, utter dispair cleansing then listening to this album is like showering in a waterfall of tears.

When I first heard Engine it was unlike any of the other AMC work : rough around the edges, very dark, brutal and with only a handful of the sparse, melancholy songs that Mark Eitzel is usually famed for. Even tracks like "Asleep" begin slow and twisted, building to a punishing ending. Anyone who thought he just was a Nick Drake acoustic master listen to Engine and hear the band in full on mode. "Electric Light" is a grinding,battering around the head, charged and unrelentless. "Are you gonna be my judge and jury tonight?", he cries, "cos I'm busy baby, with the electric light." "Mom's t.v." is equally unhinged, lonely and isolated, cursing those who keep "telling me what's gonna happen the rest of my life". Elsewhere there's the alcohol soaked country fried "Gary's Bar",living life threw the bottom of a glass in "Outside This Bar" and the cry for some kind of guidance, knowledge, forgiveness ( "Is that the same line you gave me before? I dont care anything you say is just fine.")on "Nightwatchman". It all ends with the acceptance-of-fate "This Year", looking for hope but not knowing if things can change, "Is this the look of things to come? Has it all been said has it all been done?". AMC reached their peak with their next album, the peerless beauty of "California", which I would urge all AMC fans to buy ( and which I would gladly review here but I cant find the album !) but Engine is certainly not far behind, louder, more relentless in its bitterness and must be heard by anyone who hasn't investigated AMC's early works.

I bought this record last week and it is a great one. It is even better then California. I read somewhere at amazon that this record was monotonous but I guess this guy did not know what he was talking about.