8/10 lead review in UNCUT, Rough Trade album of month 4/5 Mojo 4/5 Q Mark Eitzel (American Music Club) is to set out this November on a 5 date tour of the UK after his biggest selling record and tour in over 20 years this last February and March featuring three sold out dates. In addition to older classics from American Music Club and previous solo albums Mark will be featuring material from Hey Mr Ferryman, his first studio album recorded in London. It was made at 355 Studios with Mercury Prize winner Bernard Butler (ex-Suede, McAlmont & Butler), who has produced or recorded albums with Ben Watt, Duffy, Edwyn Collins and more. Butler produced Hey Mr Ferryman and played all of the electric guitar, bass, and keyboard parts on the album. UNCUT says “Eitzel at his unflinching best” and Q “Eitzel’s best album in years” Hey Mr Ferryman features the vivid melodies long associated with Eitzel’s former band American Music Club (a.k.a. AMC), which remains a cult favorite to this day, as well as Butler’s distinctive guitar that serves to complement Eitzel’s expressive vocals. Of that voice, Pitchfork once wrote: “If Leonard Cohen’s voice is a story about the passage of time and Levon Helm’s is a story about losing what is most precious to you, Eitzel’s is about the circuitous roads we take in search of ourselves.” “The songs on this record are about celebrating musicians and music, about misogyny, the long shadow of history, getting one’s head out of one’s ass,” quips Eitzel on the themes of Ferryman. “Also oceans, blood, skies, hearts, gay pioneers, carpenters, weeping women, and how death waits for you even in the happiest place on earth: Las Vegas.” Mark Eitzel has released over 17 albums of original material with American Music Club and as a solo artist. The Guardian has called him “America’s greatest living lyricist,” and Rolling Stone once gave him their Songwriter of the Year award. Originally formed in 1983, AMC released seven albums before breaking up in 1995. The band reunited in 2004 for two full-lengths, Love Songs for Patriots and The Golden Age. In April of 2012 while working on his last solo record, Eitzel suffered a heart attack which forced him to slow down and delayed the album’s release. In 2015, he wrote music for Simon Stephens’