Deal of the century: You can now legally and ethically download all of American Music Club’s classic 1991 album Everclear.
Just go here and download all the MP3s from “Why Won’t You Stay” to “Jesus’ Hands.” (The other MP3 there, “Another Morning,” is from their last album.)
It’s an important album to me for a number of reasons:
1. It was the first “cool,” “indie” album I ever bought. It was 1993, and I’d heard AMC play a radio in-studio on World Cafe that summer, while setting schedules for students at my old high school. I’d liked their music enough for it to penetrate my Jethro-Tull-loving skull, so when I got to New Haven that fall, I bought three CDs: this one, their then-new release Mercury, and — in a strange change of tone — Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s Extra Width.
Not sure why, exactly. I think I’d found a copy of Gerard Cosloy’s zine Conflict that had an AMC article; Cosloy was the head of Matador, which was JSBX’s label at the time. (I remember mailing off for Matador’s Xeroxed mail-order catalog to get more CDs. Ah, those innocent pre-web days.) Also, I think I thought the album cover was kinda cool.
2. I listened to Everclear endlessly in college. Which was probably not a mentally healthy thing to do. (Nor was it appreciated by my then-girlfriend, who thought me a bit mopey.) But it just seemed so beautifully sad, and that seemed like a suitably adult emotion to be having in college.
3. This site is, of course, named for track 5 on the album, “Crabwalk.” Now, you can have a soundtrack to accompany your crabwalk.com reading!
Now, almost 13 years after first hearing it, the album seems a bit weaker than I’d remembered. That everpresent wash of reverb suffocates a few songs. But the best tracks — “Ex-Girlfriend,” “Sick of Food,” “What the Pillar of Salt Held Up,” for starters — are still champs.