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Eitzel's trademark gloom still dominates, but his ability to bend glacial chords around pure poetry remains vital. In fact, it's stronger than ever.
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While the quality and beauty of The Golden Age can stand confidently beside those two classics ["Everclear & "Mercury"], it stands alone as another distinct chapter in the life of this band, precious to those who know them.
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Alternative PressThe album doesn't have the reunion hype that helped make American Music Club's "Love Songs For Patriots" such an event. What it does have is songwriting. [Mar 2008, p.140]
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AMC’s second second-life album (recorded with L.A. musicians on bass and drums) is as gorgeous and disorderly as any in its nine-album catalog.
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The Golden Age is a bewitching and thoroughly addictive record that proves that even when they push themselves out of their comfort zone, American Music Club can still come up with a classic.
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The good news is that the ninth album from these inveterate melancholics is a burnished pleasure.
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UncutThe Golden Age is the real thing. [Feb 2008, p.72]
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The new record is less political than its predecessor, but seems to share the same, more expansive perspective.
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Wisely, The Golden Age is less mediated, its variety achieved through smartly arranged curveballs like the Calexican waltz 'I Know That's Not Really You.'
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American Music Club return with a quieter but no less excellent addition to a catalog that stretches back to 1985.
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FilterAt times, it sounds downright lively, even as Eitzel paints a lyrically bleak outlook and focuses on character creation over self-examination. [Winter 2008, p.92]
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The Golden Age may simply be the Eitzel and Vudi show, but that's more than enough to make this a rich and rewarding set of songs whose gentle surfaces belie their troubling strength.
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Musically, it’s quiet and reserved, making for a subtle but satisfying listen.
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American Music Club's central values--humility, self-effacement through musical understatement, sentimental candor-- may be currently out of fashion, but The Golden Age proves that, handled with care, they never truly go out of style.
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While the band have shed much of their aggressive musical past, they are able to bring an edge to a wealth of genres that otherwise struggle with balancing a new audience with an older, AOR-accessible set.
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Yeah, Eitzel and company still overindulge in navel-gazing and slow-trudge tempos, but they overcome it on The Golden Age with a confident and mature subtlety throughout.
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The Golden Age is their most placid disc since 1989's "United Kingdom."
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MojoAficionados will welcome a renewed emphasis on Vudi's idiosyncratic string-bending, erecting iridescent frames around Eitzel's through-a-glass-darkly vignettes. [Feb 2008,p.105]
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Under The RadarAMC resembles a bar band with a raymond carver fixation, playing off Eitzel plaintively and without much care for theatricality. [Winter, 2008, p.80]
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Q MagazineEitzel's own understated standards, 'All My Love,' 'The Sleeping Beauty' and Who You Are' show signs of a more optimistic, softly rocking side. [Mar 2008, p.100]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 15 out of 17
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Mixed: 1 out of 17
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Negative: 1 out of 17
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JackC.Apr 17, 2008
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MagesApr 10, 2008I can't stop listening to it.
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DejanSt.Apr 8, 2008Much more than I expected. A return to form. Beautiful.