Eventually someone has to write the song "Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Sensitive Singer-Songwriters," and Mark Eitzel may be the man for the job. The singer-songwriter-guitarist for San Francisco's critically acclaimed American Music Club, Eitzel has been struggling with his position as a "spokesman for every tired thing" since the band's inception ten years ago.

Clearly attracted to the emotional overload of such diverse malcontents as Hank Williams, Neil Young, Nick Drake and the late Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, Eitzel, in unsparingly flat tones (when raised, his voice resembles Elvis Costello's strain), delineates both his fascination and his loathing for the self-destructive ways of modern failure. In one sense, he fulfills the role of the self-dramatized loser (his publishing moniker is I Failed in Life Music), but since AMC began receiving positive notices, Eitzel is no longer failing but succeeding miserably.

So it's small surprise when Mercury, AMC's sixth album and major-label debut, leads off with the gorgeously restrained "Gratitude Walks," on which the singer is "drunk on the kind of applause that gets louder the lower you sink." Aware of the dead end that awaits songwriters who navel-gaze too intensely, Eitzel subdues the too-personal declarations of "self-hatred and self-pity" that spiked the band's previous releases, shifting Mercury's focus to a series of scenes and characters that enable him to get lost in the wilds of wordplay, mixed metaphors and absurdism ("What Godzilla Said to God When His Name Wasn't Found in the Book of Life" is but one title).

The band responds with impressive support. Its supple rhythmic bounce in "Keep Me Around" provides perfect tension; the funky decadence of "Over and Done" underscores Eitzel's vision of Capp Street, "an underwater cave that's filled with crutches, and canes/And faces that were washed away, away from innocence and pain"; and the hydraulic apocalypse that ends "Challenger" makes clear that this is a band, no matter how good the lyrics are.

The album's centerpiece, "Johnny Mathis' Feet," exemplifies Eitzel's uncanny way of mixing the bizarre with the sublime. In that song, Eitzel presents Mathis, the epitome of the old-style showbiz singer, with all of his songs. By the end, Eitzel is awkwardly shoveling out his "old punk rock posters/Anonymous scenes of disaffection, chaos and torture." Mathis acknowledges Eitzel's commitment but misses the true point: "You were a lamb jumping for the knife/He said, 'A real showman knows how to disappear in the spotlight.'" The song, adrift in a string crescendo, quickly retreats and fades, a breathtaking moment. Its alienation is real.

Not surprisingly, the album ends on a wistful note. After the perverse "More Hopes and Dreams" – nothing more than a series of tones emitted from a San Francisco electrical power station – comes "Will You Find Me?," a gentle, acoustic number that matches the wish to disappear with the need to be found.

If American Music Club doesn't sound like anyone else (Bruce Kaphan's pedal steel hints at country, while guitarist Vudi's suspended chords suggest postpunk), chalk it up to experience (all five members are over thirty) and an indifference toward trends. Mercury is an idiosyncratic gem that's as intelligent as the work of any singer-song-writer and as visceral as the best rock & roll. (RS 654)

ROB O'CONNOR