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Classics From My Past
Classics From My Past: American Music Club - Everclear
Sometimes there is no better pleasure than digging out an album you haven't heard in years and experiencing again the rush of emotions that made the record an inseparable part of your life once upon a time. I recently listened to American Music Club's 1991 album Everclear for the first time since probably 1994 and it took me back there like a instant sad-core time machine. Suddenly I was directionless, full of dreams and a heaping amount of left-over teen angst. Is it my memory working its embellishing spell on me or is it possible that songs like "Ex-Girlfriend" (MP3) or "The Dead Part of You"(MP3) read like diary entries from 1993? Free of my projecting, does the music hold up a decade and change on? Yes and yes. Everclear holds immense personal meaning for me, but separated from that it's a stunning collection of aggressive emotion. The album is soaked in intense sadness and loss, the spacious production allows for these feelings to echo and grow in strength with each reverberation. Through each moment, singer and songwriter Mark Eitzel is barely hanging on, like a man teetering above the great abyss of isolation. He's bled his own life into these songs and it's this sacrifice that makes Everclear such a cathartic pleasure.