Mojave 3 – Out of Tune

 

Mojave 3 – Out of Tune

By

Jesse E. Mullen

 

You’ve led a moderately successful cult band from Reading. You’ve had your sound compared to everything from Cocteau Twins to the Twin Peaks soundtrack. And then it all goes up in flames due to label woes.

So was the story of Slowdive in 1995. The seminal shoegazing band released what would eventually be hailed as a genre classic, Souvlaki in 1993. But by 1994, the group were having problems with their American label, SBK. In a rather controversial move, the label refused to fund the North American leg of the Souvlaki tour.

To make matters worse, while SBK weren’t giving Slowdive the financial backing they needed, they also refused to drop the group from their label roster. Slowdive were stuck in a contract which did not benefit them. They were forced to fund the tour out of pocket.

After the end of the tour, guitarist and songwriter Neil Halstead immersed himself in the burgeoning ambient/techno music scene. He started hanging out with Mark Van Hoen of Locust, as well as members of Seefeel in dingy electronic nightclubs. Halstead wanted to capture the sounds he heard.

He holed up in his London apartment and began demoing material which utilized loops, samples, and a lot of negative space. Many of these ideas would find their way onto Slowdive’s final album for 22 years, 1995’s Pygmalion.

The group also simultaneously recorded their first soundtrack album for the 1994 indie film I Am The Elephant, You Are The Mouse. They were also finally free of the pesky SBK contract. Things seemed to be looking up for the band, but they were only going to get worse.

Although Slowdive were finally free of SBK, they had not signed an American distribution deal for their new album. This left the album to be stranded in the UK, only seeing a very limited release by Creation Records in February 1995.

Because Creation were not receiving licensing money from an American label off Slowdive’s record, this made the band redundant in the label’s eyes. Consequently, Slowdive were dropped from their roster.

While it may have seemed like the end of the band, Slowdive opted to keep going – albeit in a slightly different configuration. Almost immediately after being dropped, bassist Nick Chaplin and guitarist Christian Savill left the group. This dwindled the lineup to Halstead, Vocalist Rachel Goswell, and drummer Ian McCutcheon.

At the same time, Halstead was looking to take his music in a new direction. While Pygmalion featured a few tracks with acoustic guitars and slow tempos, Halstead was inspired to move further down that path. The trio – still called Slowdive at the time – recorded a six-song demo tape in this new style.

Among the songs was the Lynchian “Love Songs on the Radio” featuring a slide guitar and Goswell’s most stunning vocal to date, “Sarah” which featured prominent use of piano and Halstead and Goswell’s ethereal harmonies, as well as “Candle Song 3” where Halstead displayed a newfound love for Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake.

Cassettes emblazed with the title “Slowdive Demo” were promptly shipped out to record labels in hopes of enticing their A&R departments. One of these tapes found their way into the hands of Ivo Watts-Russell. The 4AD founder had a reputation for cultivating a family atmosphere at his artist-centric label.

However, like Slowdive, his fortunes had turned sour recently. After letting go of his two pet projects Cocteau Twins and Red House Painters, he was looking for a new flagship band within the dreampop/slowcore genres. While Watts-Russell had received the demo tape, the stigma of being dropped by Creation made Slowdive a dying band in his eyes.

When he finally listened, however, he was blown away. He wanted to release the demo tape as an album, just as Red House Painters did with their debut Down Colorful Hill. But Goswell insisted that it wasn’t done, and an additional three songs were recorded with Simon Rowe on guitar.

The band also renamed themselves Mojave 3 around this time. A friend of theirs said the sound of the music evoked the vastness of the desert and that they should use “Mojave” as a band name. Because another band used the name Mojave, a “3” was added to their name.

The debut album, Ask Me Tomorrow, was released in October 1995. A mere eight months after releasing the final Slowdive album, Mojave 3 were able to realize their full artistic potential. The feat is even more impressive when taking the previous 18 months of struggle and hardship into account.

The genesis of Mojave 3’s second album – 1998’s Out of Tune – was much simpler. They came up with another batch of songs and recorded them with a growing confidence and fire. However, Neil Halstead also added Dylan to his pantheon of influences. This is immediately apparent on opener “Who Do You Love.”

Two strummed acoustic guitars and Halstead’s most nasal vocal to date introduce the track in modest fashion. When the chorus hits, however – with farfisa organ and trumpets – it is something new and exciting. Halstead manages to sound both cheerier and more energized than anything on the first album. But things only get better from here.

Like “Mercy” from the first album, “Give What You Take” calls back to the Slowdive sound of Souvlaki with dreamy harmonies and a churning, hypnotic repeating guitar figure. Better still, a pedal steel guitar is featured prominently, blending in Americana influences with their British folk.

On “Caught Beneath Your Heel,” Halstead arrives at a sound combining The American Analog Set with Spiritualized. A droning vox organ introduces the track along with gently strummed acoustic guitars. Halstead sings a tale of love gone wrong, as Goswell harmonizes and the track builds to a gospel crescendo.

Guest singer Lisa Millett takes a gorgeous scat solo in the middle of the track. Her vocals work gloriously against the backdrop of the music, and it feels like a moment that could’ve been on Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space album.

But perhaps “All Your Tears” is the best song of all. A minimalist affair blending “Vapour Trail”-esque acoustic guitars with gentle leads and electric piano, it is truly gorgeous. Vocally, Halstead is in full Dylan territory once again. When he sings “something changed, my friend” you can feel the presence of Robert Zimmerman in the air. If any song could evoke the feeling of a rainy, early fall day, it would be this one.

The 90s were a tremendous time of self-discovery and artistic exploration for Neil Halstead. He discovered a knack for ambient electronic, minimalist post-rock, and Nick Drake styled folk. But with Mojave 3, Halstead reached the pinnacle of artistic expression. While Ask Me Tomorrow has the better story, Out of Tune is an equally worthy successor.

4AD/1998

 

 

American Music Club – California

 

American Music Club – California

By

Jesse E. Mullen

 

Innovating within the folk-rock genre can be tough. With stylistic cues and traditional instrumentation set in stone, it is nearly impossible to do something that hasn’t been done before. That is, unless you are Mark Eitzel and American Music Club.

The San Francisco group formed in 1982 and quickly established themselves as a creative force. Their sound combined the acoustic guitars and spectral warmth of folk rock with the coldness and glacial pace of UK post-punk and gothic rock. In 1985, they released a debut album widely considered to be the first slowcore release.

Entitled The Restless Stranger, it was unlike anything heard before. Songs like “Room Above The Club” dealt with desolation in a chugging Feelies style, while “Away Down My Street” fused lyrics about claustrophobia with dreamy guitars and cavernous drums. But a good deal of credit must also be given to singer/songwriter Mark Eitzel.

His crooning baritone had more in common with British post-punk vocalists than the raspier tone of typical folk singers. The name of the group also defied expectations. By calling themselves American Music Club, the band were no doubt poking fun at the classification of “Americana” which was becoming popular at the time.

In 1987, AMC followed it up with an even better album entitled Engine. Lead guitarist Mark Pankler – who goes by the mononym Vudi – was starting to establish himself as a versatile player, merging gothic gloom with Neil Young style rock. Eitzel was also beginning to sharpen his focus as a lyricist.

Engine is notable as having the first of Eizel’s many drinking songs. “Outside This Bar” is a jangling ode to being overserved. Eitzel vaguely compares the bartender to a drug dealer. It is somewhat ironically one of the most upbeat songs on the album. But it would prove pivotal in AMC’s development.

American Music Club quickly followed Engine with 1988’s California. The cover featured a grainy snapshot of a beach front in front of a dark green background. It’s an iconic looking cover, but does the music match the stark beauty?

Things get off to a promising start with the languid folk rock of “Firefly.” A three-chord acoustic melody and lively pedal steel introduce the track before Eitzel’s voice enters. The lyrics evoke the end of a summer day, spent “watching fireflies as the sun goes down.”

Once the chorus hits, we realize Eitzel is singing of love, and that the lyrics about the short lifespan of fireflies reflect his anxiety about his relationship potentially ending. It’s an apt metaphor, and it showed that Eitzel was further able to bring more straightforward meaning to his lyrics successfully.

The track was also the first appearance of Bruce Kaphan. Kaphan played the aforementioned pedal steel lick, including a gorgeous solo during the bridge. But it would not be his last appearance. Kaphan would continue to work with American Music Club and Mark Eitzel throughout the 90s.

Things go into full powerpop mode on “Somewhere.” Bright guitars chime and jangle. Drums crash and skitter along. It’s the most openly rocking thing American Music Club had done to that point. Eitzel sings about going out and getting “really drunk tonight.” Even if the words are a bit of a cliché, his passionate shout of the chorus sells them convincingly.

The sound of Neil Young and Crazy Horse is most explicitly referenced on “Pale Skinny Girl.” Vudi churns out swirling textures and “Cortez The Killer”-esque minor chords. Eitzel sounds thoroughly haunted as drums crash around him, his croon raised to a near-tenor range.

The lyrics – while sparse – paint a chilling picture. They cryptically describe a girl who lives in the mountains, is “frozen with terror like an animal,” and “never sees daylight.” It could be a metaphor for isolating oneself through substance abuse, or it could simply be a chilling tale of reclusiveness.

And what’s an American Music Club album without a full-on alcohol rant? We already had the fun side of drinking in “Somewhere,” but “Bad Liquor” is something else entirely. Eitzel shouts about his dependence on alcohol over a rockabilly-meets-The Doors groove. While Allmusic characterized it as a drunken rant, that is part of the charm of it.

Eitzel understood the damage alcohol was doing to him, as well as his relationships. Yet he couldn’t shake his need for it. This internal conflict informs both Eitzel’s delivery and his lyrics. And because of the conflict, the song succeeds.

Eitzel further establishes himself as a master of desolation on “Lonely.” A mid-tempo shuffle, it almost sounds as upbeat as opener “Firefly.” But lyrically, the song describes a night in with a man who doesn’t want him. He tells Eitzel to shut up when he tries to speak.

In the chorus, Eitzel concludes he would be better served to be alone than be lonely with someone else. The contrast of the brisk, almost breezy – by AMC standards – instrumentation with the dark lyrics show what Eitzel would do on later albums, including the bands major label debut Mercury in 1993.

The AIDS crisis hit San Francisco particularly hard in the 80s. After the White Night riots in 1979, the gay community had to contend with a new virus that was killing them, and a CDC that did very little to stop it. As Eitzel was a member of this community – he came out in 1985 – he experienced this loss firsthand.

The song “Blue and Grey Shirt” deals with his grief. The lyrics describe Eitzel waiting for his partner to come by, forgetting that he is now deceased. The allusion in the title is to a shirt Eitzel cryptically associates with his late love. It’s a devastating song lyrically, but an equally interesting one musically.

It starts out as slowcore meets Comes A Time-era Neil Young before shifting into finger-picked acoustic territory with spacey ambiance. Some of this is thanks to Eitzel’s fingerpicking, but credit must again be given to Bruce Kaphan’s pedal steel. Kaphan starts out playing traditionally, adding mournful color to the minor key chords of the verse.

But as the chords in the chorus become less traditional, so does Kaphan’s playing. He wraps lines around Eitzel’s picking, rather than just playing underneath it. Together they sound like two guitars playing off of each other, rather than one guitar and a pedal steel.

American Music Club were never folk rock in the purest sense. But on California they made the album where they were most closely aligned with the genre. They put their own spin on it, combining so-called Americana and British post-punk influences. In the end however, the only thing American Music Club sounded like was themselves.

Frontier/1988

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chuck Prophet – No Other Love

Chuck Prophet – No Other Love

By

Jesse E. Mullen

One of the greatest of the early 2000s. Like Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it finds the artist in question pushing the boundaries of their usual Americana/Folk/Alt. Country/Rock sound with field recordings, found sounds, tape loops, electronic beats, and various keyboard instruments. But all of this would be window dressing if Chuck didn't come up with the excellent set of songs that he did. The performances by the studio band are uniformly excellent, and Prophet’s guitar playing is as awe-inspiring as ever. Highly recommended.

New West/2002