Spearheading the sadcore movement, first as the leader of American Music

Club for twelve years and recently as a solo artist, Mark Eitzel has

been the most engaging, high-profile alterna-rock mope since Morrissey.

The big news on West, his second solo album, is the all-star backing

band, with

co-producer Peter Buck of R.E.M. not only playing guitar but also

co-writing the material. Additional musicians include Barrett Martin

(Screaming Trees), Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows), Steve Berlin

(Los Lobos) and Mike McCready (Pearl Jam), but only Berlin really stands

out (despite only a few appearances), with the rest absorbed into the

depressive Eitzel ethos. Eitzel and Buck wrote the album in a three-day

period in October of '96, but the lyrics seem to be pure Eitzel, if

anything even more consistently morose than in the past.

This is the outlook of a man for whom depression isn't a temporary

condition brought on by specific events, but rather the only way he

knows how to look at life. If he sees any hope for himself, it's purely

relative -- a slightly less-bad outcome, perhaps, rather than total

disaster, but never a really happy ending. Eitzel is the Eeyore of rock.

The new album's very first track, "If You Have To Ask," shows a favorite

Eitzel twist that will recur throughout the album, a title that's only

half the chorus phrase; here it's "If you have to ask you'll never

know," an infamous comment attributed to Louis Armstrong when someone asked

him to explain what jazz was.

"Free of Harm" offers the first evidence of a possible Buck influence;

it's uptempo, organ-drenched, almost soulful. Nonetheless, Eitzel's

self-deprecating lyric stance is clear when he says the reason he can

keep the person he's speaking to free from harm is "'cause I'm a little

shallow, but I don't know what else to do with my heart."

Then it's back to strum-and-grumble on "Helium," but with the

interesting touch of vibraphone, the most predominant new sonic touch on

the record. The distantly recorded piano and the up-close acoustic

guitar, with tambourine offering the only percussion support and a very

minimal bassline, give the piece a claustrophobic feel that's only

intensified during the instrumental break, featuring fuzz guitar and

more forwardly recorded piano. The song's point comes when Eitzel sings,

"Breathing helium, lighter than air, a sense of the future disappears,"

hardly the giddy sentiment the light gas suggests.

Then comes another uptempo tune, almost like a sea chantey in its jaunty

triple-meter swagger and Berlin's wheezing accordion chords. "Stunned

and Frozen" is obviously not a perky lyric; apparently it's about

suicide by drowning.

The slow-fast-slow-fast pattern breaks with "Then It Really Happens,"

with the vibes/piano/acoustic guitar joined by a smooth, simple

synthesizer string line that almost sounds like a mellotron, that

primitive synth so beloved by such prog-rock groups as King Crimson and

Procul Harum.

For a change, the chiming guitar riff that opens "In Your Life" is in a

major key, the first clearly R.E.M.-sounding contribution by Buck; it

could also almost be a Smiths riff. But the thick, swirling organ chords

on the chorus keep the song from sounding like either of these models,

while for the first time Eitzel's vocals (on the chorus) get a weird,

slightly out-of-synch double-tracked sound with very artificial-seeming

reverb. Whenever he sings "that's all that saves me," the mix fools

around with his long-held note on "saves," giving it a strange

electronic tinge.

The slow "Lower Eastside Tourist" with its two-chord verse and refrain

on two higher chords may be about Eitzel's recent sojourn in New York

City. It almost seems like an expansion on a line from Eitzel's first

solo record, last year's 60 Watt Silver Lining, where on "Sacred

Heart" he sings, "I'm a dime a dozen, a worthless tourist, a walking

target," but then goes on to sing about a relationship. He said of the

earlier song that it was about "looking for something, not finding it,"

which sums up a lot of his lyrics.

Berlin adds some almost atonal sax to the roiling, jazzy "Three Inches

of Wall," the densest production on the record. It's too bad it fades as

the players go totally wild and everything breaks down -- this record

needs a little chaos. "Move Myself Ahead" is the most up song on

the album, even if after declaring "I'm gonna move myself ahead" three

times Eitzel adds, "and I don't know how." But the hard-driving groove

the band builds up makes Eitzel seem more desperate than optimistic.

Things come right back down with "Old Photographs," an inexorably slow

one hooked with buzzing fuzz guitar. "There's nothing to remember,"

Eitzel mourns matter-of-factly. The short instrumental break, fuzz plus

Eitzel humming along, is a particularly casual and effectively intimate

moment. "I don't believe in anything I ever said or did," Eitzel chants

like an anti-mantra at the end until dropping out and letting the guitar

finish.

Providing a new sound, "Fresh Screwdriver" has recorders tootling

through it as Eitzel recounts a bar experience in his classic manner.

It's immediately contrasted with the only song written entirely by

Eitzel and also the most low-key, "Live or Die," a total downer of an

ending to the album. "No one cares if I live or die," Eitzel mumbles in

the sparely instrumented first verse. The energy level and volume pick

up for the second verse, but it's the same message. Berlin channels the

spirit of John Coltrane on an intense sax solo

To lament that Eitzel shouldn't have split AMC is pointless. If his

music is now more self-absorbed and less varied than before (miss that

country tinge and the pedal steel guitar!), he's a better singer, and

his lyrics are as sharp as ever -- he's the Elvis Costello of the Prozac

set. Compared even to last year's solo debut, the sound here is thicker

and much more depressing. Even fast tunes usually use minor chord

changes. If 60 Watt Silver Lining has the airy quality of a

daydream, West has the struggling-to-escape aura of a nightmare.