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American Music Club - San Francisco (Reprise) 1994


American Music Club - Love Song for Patriots (Merge) 2004

The other part of the American Music Club story is the slow build to Mercury... a handful of earlier albums (Engine, California, etc.) that seemed like dry runs with many great songs but not the overall godhead that was to come. On the other side, Mercury's follow-up, San Francisco was a little weaker in comparison. With production that was a little too candy-coated to convey the dark heart of some songs. Three standout tracks are Wish the World Away ("I've got a good one for the collection agency/It's a wish that I could wish the world away"), Cape Canaveral, and What Holds the World Together ("The world is held together by the wind/That blows through Gena Rowlands hair"). San Francisco proved to be the end of the AMC run... except a decade later the pulled off the highly improbable trick of getting back together and putting out Love Songs for Patriots, a new album every bit as good as Mercury (maybe even better). Produced by singer Mark Eitzel and drummer Tim Mooney, it has the tarnished brass feel of their best moments, a slightly expanded palette of instruments and the world weariness of a drifter that spent a decade being batted down by America only to end up back on the same San Francisco barstool he'd left ten years ago.
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Amina - AminaminA (Self Released) 2005

We went (M. and me) to see Sigur Ros in Portland, ME last March and Amina were the opening group: An Icelandic quartet of ladies who also played the string sections for the Sigur Ros set. Their own stuff was an intriguing blend of digital/computer triggers and sounds supplemented by wineglasses, front desk bells, xylophones. I grabbed this little e.p. at the merch table and it's fun, but it misses a little of the fun watching them bang away on their tables of junk.
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aMINIATURE - DEPTHfiveRATEsix (Restless) 1994

One of the first big distributors I had dealings with was Cargo Records, an international company with a warehouse in Montreal. It had become increasingly bloated and eventually sank out of site in a tarpit of its own making. But in those last days they shot out tons of playcopies by both great and obscure bands. aMINIATURE were one of those semi-obscure bands with an angular/agressive sound that you'd find on labels like Touch and Go and Quarterstick with increasing regularity through the mid-90s. They also had an Korean lead singer... something that was strangely common during the same time period. Aside from a fresh (at the time) angle on heavier guitar rock, the group may also be credited with a song called Towner on the B-Side that future rock heroes Spoon later covered on their first album.
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Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes (Warner) 1991


Tori Amos - Winter (Warner) 1992

During my early, early CD buying years (85-88) I had big crushes on many female singer/songwriter types... Kate Bush in particular comes to mind, but also Jane Siberry, Annie Lennox and even (forgive me) Sarah McLachlan. When Tori Amos released Little Earthquakes it seemed like a culmination of a lot of those other artists' musical styles, but with lyrics that were much more poetically abstract but personal. I tried to keep up with her output from here on out... but an avalanche of girls-at-pianos kinda soured the love affair. The Winter e.p. had the notorious Smells Like Teen Spirit cover and songs by Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones as well.
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And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - S/T (Trance Syndicate) 1997


And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Source Tags and Codes (Interscope) 2002

Found their first album second hand at the aforementioned Urban Sound Exchange for cheap. I'd read about their chaotic live show and the album bore that out... so I never would have picked them to be signed by a major label . Source Tags and Codes maintained their heavy "pushing the red line" sound, but it also involved a little gentrification in the form of production. A problem that dogs them is that several members write the songs separately, making the albums a little uneven track to track (especially on their most recent album). But more on that later.