One reason I love music is the healing effect some of it has on me. It is weird but whenever I’m in a depressive mood I love to listen to sad music. Bathing in self-pity really does me good occasionally. It’s very selfish and totally unproductive but it helps to get over those dark intervals. When I’m down I can’t take happy-go-lucky music. Actually I hardly ever listen to happy music. Usually it makes me feel uncomfortable. Something must be wrong with me, I feel.

Anyways when I read in this ILM thread about a new American Music Club album and I noticed several people were slagging off West, Mark Eitzel’s phantastic collaboration with Peter Buck from REM I had to defend it (to no avail of course) and relisten to it. It still has got this immediate soothing effect on me, like an embrace of a brother in soul. Warm and hopeless at the same time. Extremely tuneful and almost poppy with that very special so desperate sounding crooner's voice of Eitzel on top. Rather lushly produced with Buck’s guitar, some piano, drums, keyboards, saxophone and even flutes. And if it is true what one guy on the ILM thread said, namely that the album was only rehearsed for a couple of times before the recording I must say that this is how I like it, any more polishing would have only diluted the essence of the record. There is also a jazzy track on it which ends in a kind of improvised jam session: Three Inches of Wall. And on the last song Live Or Die there is a wonderful saxophone solo. Some wise and banal bits of the lyrics I overheard, I couldn’t find the complete lyrics on the web:

Chorus from If You Have to Ask:

Chorus from Free of Harm:

In Your Life:

Stunned & Frozen:

Chorus from Live or Die: