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Where did you record the record?

At Kingsize Studio's in LA. The producer was Dave Trumfio who made a name for himself recording many records including Summerteeth by Wilco

How long to record the album?

2 months - one month to rehearse

When did you start writing songs for record?

Some of the songs were written 2 years ago - some were written right before the album was recorded. One of the songs - called 'Sleeping Beauty' was on a previous solo album of mine called 'Candy Ass' - and the band wanted to put it on this record. On My Way was begun many years ago.

Is there a theme for this record?

Nope - it is just a collection of songs played by AMC. If there was a theme - it would be how much fun it is to play music with these guys.

Do you write songs as a band?

We arrange the songs I write as a band. I bring the finished songs to the band and they either batter them into shape or into little pieces. It is more or less a democracy - but sometimes I will say no.

How was this a different approach from your last record 'Love Songs For Patriots'?

We recorded as live as we could do without thousands of overdubs. There was a month of rehearsal and then a month of mixing. We arranged the music before we went into the studio. There wasn't a lot of time or money - so this is what we did.

Where did you find Sean and Steve (the new bassist and drummer)?

Vudi was a fan of a band called 'The Bedroom Walls' - of which Sean was the guitarist. When he left the band and joined the 'Larks' - Vudi loved this band and Steve was the drummer and one of the songwriters. Last year I called Vudi and said that we should try working out some arrangements for the new AMC record. He called Sean and Steve just as a way of bashing out some ideas. We worked together for a week or so and it felt very easy. Steve and Sean are very, very good players. The original members of AMC had been out of touch for a long time - and after a while playing with Steve and Sean felt more like a band than trying to play with Tim and Danny.

How would you categorize your music?

We always try and subvert categories - I would say we are a different genre according to any band member you talk to. It's an impossible question.

What tunes stand out for you on this record?

That is another hard question. I personally like 'All My Love' and 'I Know That’s Not Really You'. The record company chose the single.

What is different about this record than other AMC records?

I think it’s easier to listen to than previous records. The focus was on making a positive statement. Maybe there is something more free about this one. I love pop music - it seems like the most honest statements are the simplest. Also we wanted to make something that people would want to listen to over and over. I think this album is simpler than previous records. The music is basically just what we rehearsed before recording it.

What does the title 'The Golden Age' mean?

Well it was Vudi's idea to call the record this and put it against a picture of two pit bulls fucking or against a picture of a slaughterhouse. The reason for the title can be your own interpretation.

Whose idea was the album cover?

This was completely the idea of the photographer Mark Holthusen. He wanted to take these pictures as part of his collection (see his web site!) and we agreed - but never thought that this would be the album cover until we saw the cover photograph.

How do you like Los Angeles?

I love Los Angeles but I still make my home in San Francisco - where my heart is.

What are the old band member doing now?

Tim Mooney works at a cooperative studio called Closer in San Francisco. Dan Pearson (bass) plays in several bands and is also releasing his own solo record. He has a web site - that you can find through the AMC web site.

What are your plans for the record? Do you think it will be a smash hit?

Of course it will. By this time next year I will be playing for the President at the White House. I will have a yacht and a plane and a collection of solid gold candy dispensers ...

Do you write the music or the lyrics first?

Well it’s a bit of both - sometimes the words suggest music and sometimes the music suggest words.

About the songs:

All My Love:

It is all in the song - I have nothing to say about it.

John Berchman Victory Choir:

St. John Berchman is the Patron Saint of altar boys. I used to be one.

The Stars

It’s a song that came from a dream

The Dance

Inspired partly by the movie Werkmeister - and by those stupid sunglasses that all American cops and soldiers wear to intimidate you into thinking that there is no justice.

The Sleeping Beauty

Originally recorded on a solo record of mine called Candy Ass. The band like the song and we started playing it - so when it came to recording the record we decided to throw it on.

The Grand Duchess

About one of San Francisco's lost souls.

Who You Are

A dumb love song - from the point of view of someone who is always outclassed.

On My Way

Came from a ferry crossing that AMC took from the UK to Germany - in a bar full of soldiers from Northern Ireland, on their way to Croatia.

Windows On The World

Was the name of the bar on the top of he World Trade Center

One Step Ahead

About being on a boat.

All The Lost Souls Welcome You To San Francisco

Yes I am a lost soul - and tried to write a tribute to my city.

www.cookingvinyl.com / www.american-music-club.com / www.myspace.com/americanmusicclub

American Music Club are set to release their 9th long player, The Golden Age, their strongest album in over a decade, in Ireland on Friday 25th January 2008. Uncut Magazine has already called it their best since 1993’s masterpiece Mercury. The Golden Age follows the band’s 2004 release, the much lauded Love Songs For Patriots, which had the Guardian calling lead singer and songwriter Mark Eitzel “America’s greatest living lyricist”.

American Music Club was formed in San Francisco by Eitzel, in 1982, after he moved from Ohio back to his native California. The band started out with a steady revolving door of musicians, none of which survived the first year, but 1983 brought with it band stalwarts Vudi on guitar and Danny Pearson on bass who both shared Eitzel’s love of rock, country, blues, folk, pop and punk, synthesizing it into an incredibly unique and engaging musical melting pot. Eitzel's enigmatic presence, heartfelt vocals and brilliant song writing featured alongside Vudi’s highly original guitar playing. Songs often became an unpredictable marriage of Vudi and Danny’s free-form jazz tendencies and Eitzel's downbeat poetics. Eitzel had spent most of his teen years growing up in Southampton, England, where he witnessed the birth of the UK punk movement, and this provided him with a musical background he now built on.

The band's debut album, Restless Stranger, their American answer to Joy Division, steeped in post punk, received little attention on its release in 1985. AMC's first UK release, Engine (1987), featuring the first of Eitzel's many classic songs, 'Outside this Bar', a theme he carries with him to this day, was closely followed by what many critics call the first of their three masterpieces, California. The next year built on their new-found British following, with a UK-only release aptly titled United Kingdom - a collection of live tracks and superb studio tracks, not merely a stop-gap record but a release that still stands on its own merit to this day. Like many US bands at this time (Green on Red, Gun Club etc), AMC found they were given more attention on European shores than back in the States. Everclear came out in 1991, with the addition of pedal steel maestro Bruce Kaphlan who produced the album as well. It landed Eitzel "Best Songwriter of the Year" in the Rolling Stone Critics Poll, not to mention a "Hot Band" pick from the same publication. With all this attention and sell-out performances on both sides of the Atlantic, the major labels stepped in to release the band’s sixth album, Mercury (1993), considered by many to be a masterpiece of modern popular music and AMC’s most focused record.

The band’s live shows were incendiary and unpredictable, swinging between quiet acoustic moments to soaring guitar and pedal steel heights, the dynamics of which matched that of the Bad Seeds or the Bunnymen at their best. AMC played with Bob Dylan, Pearl Jam and the Bad Seeds, incessantly touring through the early 90s, but the spring of 1994 saw the band settle down to produce a set of songs that emphasized the line-up's new-found steadiness and a wealth of new perspectives. They called it San Francisco. This, their seventh album, was full of introspective songs that twisted and turned like the ambivalent emotions that created them. Once again, though critically acclaimed, it failed to produce the radio hit they needed to move on to the next level. In part due to this frustration of being only critics darlings but not commercially successful, American Music Club split up, albeit amicably.

Eitzel went on to create of reservoir of much-loved solo efforts, including 60 Watt Silver Lining for Virgin, moving over to Matador Records for Caught in A Trap, which included members of Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo. The electronic based Invisible Man followed and Eitzel began the new century with two albums’ worth of covers. Pearson went on to play with Clodhopper and release solo recordings, while Vudi fronted LA band Clovis de Foret, as well as playing with 80s revisionists Ariel Pink and Mooney set up his own Closer studios.

Interest in the band grew with the likes of Divine Comedy recording AMC’s ‘Johnny Mathis Feet’, with a 30-piece orchestra to back it up. Calexico, Lambchop, M Ward, Willard Grant, Steve Wynn and Chris & Carla soon followed, recording AMC covers for AMC tribute album Come on Beautiful. With heavyweights Coldplay, Radiohead, REM and Pearl Jam publicly proclaiming their love of AMC, offers for them to reform rolled in from Europe. In the summer of 2004, AMC got back together for a sold-out performance at London’s Southbank Centre and began recording together again. Eitzel had been working on a batch of songs and the band decided that these would be the seeds for their new record Love Songs for Patriots. Uncut gave it Album of the Month, with a 5-star review and said it was “Absolutely fu*king brilliant … this band belongs together”. The rest of Europe’s press agreed. The band followed this up with a European and US tour and went straight into composing and performing a live soundtrack for the silent film classic ‘Street Angel’, in San Francisco. Sadly the film’s European tour was cancelled due to major problems obtaining a workable film print of adequate quality.

Four years on and the band is back with an even greater album, The Golden Age, written and recorded throughout 2007. This release sees the band exploring their quieter side, and it also sees a new rhythm section, with Steve Didelot on drums and Sean Hoffmann on bass and guitars. While not disbanding the old line-up, Eitzel felt that he wanted to involve Vudi more with the recordings than he was able to on Love Songs for Patriots, and the only way to do that was to move to Los Angeles where Vudi lives and works. Vudi had been working with a local rhythm section from a band called the Larks. At the AMC rehearsals, it soon became clear that it was not workable for Pearson and Moody to be constantly traveling to and from LA, so after months of rehearsals with Didelot and Hoffmann, Eitzel felt the new line-up was far better suited to the new material and recruited them in as the new rhythm section. The band will be embarking on their longest ever tour early in 2008.