American Music Club - United Kingdom / California : I'd collected all my AMC and Mark Eitzel albums together to figure out an AMC/Eitzel primer/mix-cd for a friend, but realised I don't yet own Everclear. Hmm. And I've no idea how I'm going to choose only one or two tracks from Mercury. In the mean time, I've been playing songs like Blue and Grey Shirt (and Dreamers of the Dream) a couple of times, both last night and tonight, and it's still not enough. Just a little pedal steel, lurking behind trademark tired, yearning vocals. But I've got to listen to other things, even if this one song feels so good. It's not the massive soap opera that Hula Maiden is, for instance, it's more just the quiet moping guy in the corner. I hear they actually tried to give away Eitzel's blue and grey shirt on a radio show, once.

The Mountain Goats - Tallahassee : this is about the 4th listen, I think. It'll take a few more before I'll be ready to fully embrace it as a masterpiece, the way mobs like Splendid have, but yeah, it's showing the signs.