new amc and travis morrison mp3s

Two new MP3s of note:
– Ladies and Gentlemen, It’s Time, the first new track from this site’s namesake American Music Club in nine years.
– Born in ’72, the latest preview from Travis Morrison‘s upcoming album.
I can’t say I’m in love with either of them, but one song leaves me very happy and one grumpy. The Morrison is the grumpster — it shows him falling farther into novelty (as previously feared) and away from the sort of smart college-boy funk-punk he used to produce. I’m fearing the new album more and more.
The AMC track is solid but not great. But it does have two things working in its favor:
1. Jeezumpete, it’s a new American Music Club track! Nine years, people!
2. It actually sounds like the AMC of old. The same jazzy bass, the loose drumming, the airy sound that manages to be loungy but not kitschy. There’s even a verse featuring that most classic of AMC images, the bartender-as-savior (“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time / The bartender is looking you right in the eye / He says someone will replace all that thin blood with my wine / You can live with the truth, you can live with a lie”).
Mark Eitzel’s vocals are a little strained, but then again, he did turn 45 last week — I can excuse the high-register misfires. And George W. Bush isn’t mentioned even once, which I’d feared from Eitzel’s recent statements that the new AMC record would be “political.” All in all, it makes me think the new album, whenever it comes out, might be a return of the ol’ AMC magic. Or at least it might not be the earth-shaking disappointment you’d expect from a former favorite band reforming after a decade.
In other AMC news, they’ll be playing two shows at SXSW next month. Unfortunately, I will have just driven back from Austin three days earlier and been through the traditional pre-SXSW concert gorge.
(Tons of bands headed for SXSW Music play Dallas along the way. In the three nights after I get back from SXSW Interactive, there’ll be Dallas shows by the Decemberists, Calexico, Broken Social Scene, Sonic Youth, Trans Am, John Vanderslice, and NERD. Seriously, it’s just not fair to make a man live through months of concert drought and then make him choose between Calexico and Broken Social Scene on the same night.)
And I no longer have a dependable place to stay in Austin. And there’s the whole wristband/access crap of SXSW Music to deal with. We’ll see if I make it down for AMC or not.