The former leader of American Music Club singing a set of soul, jazz, and country classics? The idea, evidently that of co-producer Johan Kugelberg, might have been a disaster. Eitzel doesn’t have the voice to handle Bill Withers, and he sounds more like a phone-sex amateur than Sinatra on “I’ll Be Seeing You”. But with Brian Paulson’s sonic warmth, subtle risks (he doubles, even triples, Eitzel’s voice), and arrangements leaning on laid-back swirls of keyboards, bass, and percussion, the music glows like an after-hours bourbon, bathing Eitzel’s whispers in a gorgeous, soulful light.
The problem is that Eitzel never sounds comfortable with songs such as “I Only Have Eyes For You” and the disco smash “More, More, More”, melodies that are predicated on emotional follow-through. He seems to know the limitations in his own droopy croon, as if in mid-whisper he hears another voice whispering in his ear: “You really can’t pull this off, can you?”
With a faux piano-bar spoken coda, Eitzel even sabotages an otherwise pleasant “Help Me Make It Through The Night”; if he felt like a lounge lizard, why would he bother? It’s not like he’s ever had a problem taking himself seriously before. But with perhaps Phil Ochs’ finest song, “Rehearsals For Retirement”, he finally does just that, finding a finer emotional connection to Ochs’ elliptical resignation and elegiac melody. It’s a definitive version; for all the pretty, groovy sounds on this disc, nothing else comes close.
