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Jan 26, 2017It’s Eitzel’s heaviest album, but it’s also, in a peculiar way, his sweetest.
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Feb 16, 2017Eitzel and Butler work so well together one hopes that this collaboration doesn’t end with the remarkable Hey Mr [sic] Ferryman.
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Feb 10, 2017Admittedly there are sometimes a few too many overwrought guitar solos--moments where Eitzel and Butler may have been better off toning things down--but overall this is a surprising new partnership that works very well indeed.
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Feb 2, 2017This is smart, meditative music that needs the appropriate time to vest, where further listening provides new perspectives and details that weren’t as apparent at first glance.
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Jan 26, 2017This is smart, passionate music, as strong musically as it is lyrically, and like so much of Eitzel's work, if it isn't always hopeful, it's full of a humanity that shines out through the darkness.
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Jan 24, 2017With Hey Mr. Ferryman, Eitzel again distills a brutal, nonsensical world into beauty. It’s a feat worth observing.
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Jan 19, 2017Even more consistently inspired than Eitzel's previous two, excellent solo albums (2009's Klamath and Don't Be A Stranger from 2012), Hey Mr Ferryman demands that Eitzel is at last granted at least as much attention and acclaim as his fellow songwriting Mark, former Red House Painters-leader Kozelek.
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Jan 18, 2017On Hey Mr Ferryman, Eitzel no longer exudes such a colossal sense of searing introspection; perhaps he has finally reconciled with himself and, in Butler, has found the perfect foil to achieve this harmony.
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MojoJan 6, 2017Still crossing the many rivers of doubt, hope and despair that have faced him since his American Music Club days, Mark Eitzel's tenth solo album can nonetheless throw out surprises. [Feb 2017, p.96]
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Q MagazineJan 6, 2017It amounts to Mark Eitzel's best album in years. [Feb 2017, p.112]
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Jan 6, 2017The portraits of Hey Mr Ferryman, shaped into gorgeous studies of sympathy by Bernard Butler's production, are compelling in their starkness, their raw, unchecked humour, and their kindness toward people who, as Eitzel says, are looking for "something that will lead them to light and safety." [Feb 2017, p.20]
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Feb 3, 2017In a sparser framework, the singer and his songs flourish. Eitzel's spite and self-deprecating humor rub shoulders on "The Road" and "In my Role as Professional Singer and Ham."
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Feb 22, 2017Several navel-gazing songs about musicianship only cement Eitzel’s reputation as a songwriter’s songwriter, favouring tinkering with classic structures over tugging the low-hanging heartstrings or banging out honking great hooks, but this ferryman will definitely get fans of arch-folk to the other side.
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Jan 25, 2017In all, Hey Mr. Ferryman is a welcome return from one of America’s most consistently challenging and rewarding songwriters. It’s an album that creeps up on you slowly, its hooks subtle but, once set, inescapable.
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Jan 25, 2017Butler performs miracles as producer, sprinkling flute like pollen over “An Angel’s Wing Brushed The Penny Slots”, and haunting “Nothing And Everything” with spectral backing vocals. Eitzel’s glass-half-empty attitude, however, grips the songs too tightly.
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Jan 6, 2017Long-term fans will be delighted, the uninitiated might just find themselves falling for his grouchy charms.