by Jason Ankeny
With the erratic California, Mark Eitzel's songwriting skills blossom
into full maturity. From the pedal-steel inflected opener "Firefly"
to the luminous "Western Sky," the best of his compositions
reveal uncommon depth and emotional heft: "Somewhere" cuts with
the savage humor of a master storyteller, while "Blue and Grey Shirt,"
a memoir of a friend's AIDS-related death, is simply devastating. A number
of the cuts don't work at all -- the muddy "Bad Liquor" is an
indecipherable rant, while "Laughing Stock" is by-the-numbers
melodrama -- but those that do are nothing short of transcendent.
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