Customer Reviews

Invisible Man

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Coming on the back of some unbelievably memorable live UK shows in late 2000 this album fulfilled all the expectation and represented a blistering return to form.
The sound could be defined as lo-fi home electronica,in keeping with 'Lovers Leap USA' and the '99 demo's,and would hopefully appeal to those who found 'Caught In A Trap...' too bleak.
'The Boy With The Hammer' sets the tone with its slow-building intensity only punctuated late on by Eitzel's knowing self-parody when he croons,"So... boo, hoo, hoo,I'm really gonna miss you...".
The next is best..."Can you see,can you see,can you see what the world is?/The way it pulls you on and tricks you it's always some new spring morning...?".A song as good as anything in the AMC and Eitzel back-catalogue.Acoustic and emotional beauty is the best way to describe it...but if I could describe it properly,you wouldn't be reading the rest of my hopeless attempt to do justice to the man and would instead,simply be buying this and the entire AMC/Eitzel collection.Which I sincerely hope you are...
'To The Sea' is a tribute to Jeff Buckley but in a slightly more personal way than I suspect other attempts might be...As the live introductions confirm(with the then hindsight of listening to the song on CD)the song is Eitzel confessing his attraction to Jeff but only to us in song...because the last time he saw Jeff in New York prior to his tragic drowning Eitzel had almost waved him away rather than face up to his feelings.That Eitzel can then tie all this in with Jeff's inability to come to terms with his father and just us,how we generally act and feel is genius..."I was just busy running/Running from your beauty/Some run from the devil/Some from their own history/Some run from their hopes/And some run to the sea/Stupid don't you agree?".Well,yes.And human.All too human...
The whole of this album maintains the feel,the feeling and I cannot really recommend it enough.It doesn't contain a bad track(although 'Christian Science Reading Room' has to be described as a dirge compared to the humour-central live performances - a minor quibble!)and has a warmth missing from the previous album...
The final track quite properly exhorts each individual throughout their life to proclaim their joy and this is special because after all that has gone before it is an acknowledgement that however life is,however bad it seems at any given time,it is ...still something to believe in.Believe in Eitzel's hard-won wisdom here,enjoy this magnificent album and proclaim your joy but seek also truth,or a truth,and bear in mind the question Eitzel forces you to face :"...But if the truth won't make you happy,what will you do...?" .The implication here is that you will,maybe against the odds,dig in and try to find that elusive beauty or feeling...An inspiration.

Mark Eitzel is the greatest living songwriter, without question. In my mind, this album is a return to his glory, something that hadn't been seen since 60 Watt Silver Lining and before American Music Club split. Definatively different than anything he'd ever done before, either solo or with American Music Club. There is a little dance feel to it, with drum machines and synths adding some textures. But Mark's gorgeous, fragile guitar playing is not lost at all with this. The electronics merely add to the songs. "Sleep" is my favorite solo Mark Eitzel song. Maybe it's the line about the pedal steel guitar, I don't know. But just an absolutely beautiful song. "Anything" is a haunting little song, perhaps about his ex-girlfriend Kathleen Burns, who died of an overdose in 1998. Although they hadn't been together for a number of years before her death, you can tell that he knows he might never love anyone as much as he loved her. "I'd do anything to be where you are;" perhaps calling to Kathleen in heaven. "Without You" feels like it belonged on an American Music Club album, maybe "Mercury." I could honestly go one forever about this records. It's beautiful, amazing. It makes me cry. I listen to it in the car and imagine Mark standing before me, onstage, holding his acoustic guitar. A very honest man. This record is almost like he opened up his soul and let anyone see what was inside. It really, really is a horrible shame that Mark Eitzel and the American Music Club were never really recognized for their amazing talents.

In purusing the reveiws of those who claim to be Eitzel fans, there is an undercurrent that his more pop-driven songs are his weakest. I disagree and come to Eitzel's music from a different perspective, generally prefering his more upbeat tunes. Against that backdrop, "Invisible Man" is better than "Caught in a Trap," but falls short of "60 Watt Silver Lining" and "West." The second cut, "Can you see?" is the most accessible song since "In your Life" from "West." Here, Eitzel continues his exploration of blindness and sight as themes for moral/emotional confusion and spiritual healing. In addition to "Can you see?," Eitzel resurrects the seeing eye dog from previous albums. A powerful metaphor resonating with images from King Lear's Gloucester or Lear himself. Unlike other Eitzel efforts, this album did not grow on me as much as most others. Rather than getting more and more out of each listening, I reached a plateau of appreciation for the music and lyrics, though the plateau still eclipses most other artist's works. As always, Eitzel delivers a powerful lyrical punch. But for me, the album becomes a bit monotonous as it progresses. A good, but not great effort from someone whom I expect to produce sublime rather than acceptably memorable songs.

Recorded mostly on his own in his San Francisco apartment using a sampler and Pro-tools, "The Invisible Man" sees the return of a more clearheaded Eitzel three years after the dour "Caught in a Trap." Although his fourth official solo release since the demise of his much-loved-by-those-in-the-know American Music Club is initially easier on the ears with its engaging acoustic and synthetic textures, it is not minus Eitzel's trademark wit and intelligence. With its tales of death, masquerade parties, betrayal and revenge, good drugs and bad sex all sung in a husky baritone, "The Invisible Man" is dense with hope and melancholy. It is also the most overtly musical album Eitzel has recorded since "60 Watt Silver Lining," with the occasional welcome choruses - as on the luminous "Shine" - that stick not only in the mind but in the heart. But as in the past it's Eitzel's emotional veracity that affects you the most. The words of "Bitterness" and "Anything" cut so close that you feel like a voyeur, as if you are reading someone's personal journal. Even Eitzel admits as much. Of the song "Christian Science Reading Room" he remarked: "It's a true story. All of my songs are true stories, actually." Nakedly honest, at times almost embarrassingly so, but "The Invisible Man" is never anything less than engaging. It's darkness made visible.

Could The Invisible Man be Mark's Actung Baby? It's not that Mark changed his sound radically and we will be seeing him prancing along a catwalk in a stadium near you anytime soon. It's more like he embraced some of today's technology and married it against his deeply confessional songs. The song that opens the Invisible man "The Boy with the Hammer" sets the tone for the entire CD. It has little electronic touches that gives the music a whole new dimension that makes what seems like a very slow ballad or slower tempo song a huge rush of energy. Much like U2 took a mid tempo rock song like "The Fly" and enhanced it with studio gimmickry. It doesn't kill the songs it only makes them better. "Can You See?" is as close to mainstream pop song as I think we might ever hear. You are going to hear some odd instrumentation during the course of the disc and some different arrangements this time around but none of these improvements hurts Mark's songs. The sad fact is that this CD unfortunately will go unnoticed by the simpleton music buyer (a.k.a. mainstream music thunderheads) but Mark creates one of the best CD's of the year. They will never know the pure joy of hearing his music and you will not go wrong with this CD.

With each new release, Mark Eitzel's songs move closer to detached social commentary and ironic observation and further away from the empathetic outpourings he showcased in the now defunct American Music Club. And in 'The Invisible Man' the ironic sideways glance is not just lyrical but also instrumental - thanks to the empowering presence of ProTools, Eitzel can now indulge in self-remixology and package the songs in a post-rave pitter-patter that foms a curious juxtaposition with his poetic core. It all sounds very postmodern and would probably be the undoing of a lesser artist. This is not a poor album - there are many songs that put the competition to shame on both musical and lyrical fronts. But in the final analysis there is only one - 'Without You', which approaches anything like the emotional directness and confessional grace of The American Music Club's finest hour.

i love this album. i've been a fan for some years now. i first bought "engine" back in the 80's. "engine" along with the replacements' "let it be" changed me. since then, i've always found the arrival of a new eitzel record to be a treat. however, after the break-up of amc i sensed a greater self-conciousness folding over mark. by the time "west" came out the language seemed to be completely obscured. now with that being said and the quality and precision that mark always writes with, shouldn't that be enough? well,...no. the problem is that he is a GREAT singer when he gets behind it. when mark doesn't conceal himself he is as good a singer as any and better that most. he reminds me of some heavenly mix of billie holiday, dean martin and george jones. a near lethal dose of glory and sadness. maybe i've gotten carried away, but right now, i don't care. because "the invisible man" is spilling in from the other room and the songs are great and mark eitzel is really singing. it's like being there when a friends' eyes finally clear and brighten after a horrible depression.

Why this genius of a man remains the secret pleasure of relatively few is one of life's abiding mysteries, as for the better part of a decade, alone or with his band American Music Club, he's been surgically dissecting the human condition with precision, nonpareil. Two years in the making and coloured with the pleasures of sampling, The Invisible Man is a journey into optimism and a fragile contentment by way of grief, regret, and stark introspection. A real human warmth shines through on Can You See? and Christian Science Reading Room is bitingly funny, but like some whispered privacy, eavesdropped on a late night corner, Steve I Always Knew stuns with its candour. Without You, and Anything, cut with a deep familiarity, confirming that no-one frames misery like Eitzel, but despite and because of everything the single and closer, Proclaim Your Joy, crammed with silly word games, completes the picture as a triumph over adversity. A masterpiece.

The Invisible Man is undoubtedly one of Mark Eitzel's finest albums, with or without American Music Club. Very few artists can mine the inner soul quite as well as Eitzel with such staggeringly consistent results. I don't want to go on about how some music is more real than other music - however, when you listen to this record you don't feel shortchanged for quality and artistic integrity. 'Can You See', 'Shine', 'To the Sea' and 'Sleep' are all utterly spellbinding, ingeniously arranged and lyrically fascinating. Take the time to discover The Invisible Man, it'll be an *illuminating* experience.

Mark Eitzel is apparently a brilliant man. I say this because in lyric after lyric he is able to get right to the heart of the matter via a new route that reveals ordinarily hidden or unexpressed features of the human emotional landscape.

This album breaks new ground musically for Eitzel. On his independently released "Lovers' Leap USA" we first heard Eitzel fooling around with ProTools in his apartment, but here we have much more fully realized arrangements. "Steve I Always Knew" appears on both albums and the difference between the two versions says it all. The Lovers' Leap version is stripped down and the Invisible Man version is lush. The Invisible Man reveals more and more with each listening and benefits from being played on a nice system with maximum dynamic range. This album was slaved over and it shows.

The one thing that surprised me was Eitzel's voice. He does not push it to its upper limits anywhere on this CD. His phrasing is as complicated and appealing as ever, but he stays near the middle and lower end of his vocal range. There is also more than the usual dose of humor on this album. "Christian Science Reading Room", in which both he and his cat get religion, is hilarious. "Proclaim Your Joy" is practically a Christmas song albeit a cryptic and goofy one.

I quite like the electronic touches here. Before I bought it I was under the impression that it was more electronic than it actually is. Generally speaking Eitzel seems to have recorded the basic tracks with available musicians and then tweaked and twiddled for uncountable hours to flesh out the bones. The Luddites among his fans may prefer more organic albums like 60 Watt Silver Lining, but I really admire Eitzel for trying something new and showing tasteful restraint musically while wearing, as usual, his heart on his sleeve.