Mark Eitzel’s tenth solo album and his first in three years, Hey Mr Ferryman,
will be released on January 27, 2017, by Merge Records.
Hey Mr Ferryman is Eitzel’s first full studio album recorded entirely in London. It
was made at 355 Studios with Mercury Prize winner Bernard Butler (ex-Suede,
McAlmont & Butler), who has produced and/or recorded albums with Tricky, Ben
Watt, Bert Jansch, Edwyn Collins, and more. Butler produced Hey Mr Ferryman
and played all of the electric guitar, bass, and keyboard parts on the album.
Butler wrote of the process: “I spent a fortnight on my own in the studio seeing
where I could go, how to expand every mood, make the dark songs darker, the
drama bigger, the joy more celebratory. I was elated when I sent initial mixes
off and Mark was happy. The greatest gift for a producer is the trust of the
artist with their work. I knew from the off with this record that the songwriting
was in a different league. It was for me to find beautiful frames for each story.”
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.”
Howe Gelb’s Future Standards Began in Amsterdam ended in New York City and in between, was all Tucson. These are ‘Future Standards’ by The Howe Gelb Piano Trio, taking an outsider view of early gospel and rhythm and blues both part of the American musical socialization that he touched on with 2006’s ‘Sno Angel’. Now he’s on a jazz-tinged trip, bending the genre, taking it back to his shack, giving an innovative fine tune in the lean-to garage. Don’t forget, Gelb is a man who’s done acoustic sets where he sings into the pick up of his guitar, he’s rocked out with Giant Sand, re-shaped alt-country and has a back catalogue that’s nothing short of “im-press-ive”. He knows a melody when he plays it
