mark eitzel songs of love live
A sad album
Ok – this is a loaded prompt. I’ve been listening to sad music for decades, and it usually makes me feel better, so it’s not really sad – Most soulless pop crap on the radio makes me feel sad, but I don’t want to write about that. Also, depressing isn’t sad, angry isn’t sad. If there’s a dark, bleak track with a beat, and makes you dance, that’s not sad. There are so many amazing albums with sad songs, but I wouldn’t call them sad albums.
I narrowed it down to three. Three albums that I would describe as “sad”. Simon Joyner’s Room Temperature (1993), Mark Eitzel’s Songs of Love Live (1991), and Everything I Long For by Hayden (1995). The Nineties were a sad time…
I could write many words on all three, and even pick a few more, but – pick one. Simon Joyner moves a little too deep into depression, Hayden has that warmth that moves the songs into the “sadness shared is lessened”, so that leaves me with Mister Mark Eitzel. He has written so many beautiful sad songs, but this album that sadness is alone and held up raw and bare for the audience.
#30daysofalbums #markeitzel #songsoflovelive
Most of the songs on this album are American Music Club songs, but here, sung sometimes hesitantly, emotionally, heartbreakingly, with that self-depreciating humor and edge of introspective depression, the songs take on a different mood, a different shade of blue.
Five songs are pulled off of California, already a sad album in itself, and listening to them played here is ache captured. “Last Harbour” kills me every time, in that best saddest way.
Marcel Feldmar 