Now that it is completely, definitively, decisively established that the surest route to mainstream chart success these days is repetitive, dance-tinged songs about feeling empowered while dancing all night long in the club, I can’t help but wonder if there are any tracks on those slicked-up albums that take a look at the melancholy downside. It’s not that I think there’s some responsibility of pop culture to provide that balance. Instead, I’m just struck by the way that the college radio playlists of my younger days often seemed to have songs that portrayed drinking cultures in all their permutations, from celebratory to regretful. The Replacements may have called for sudsy beverages matched with barbecue chips as a foundational breakfast but they also delivered arguably the most poignant song ever penned about the barfly life. There was some acknowledgment that staying up all night to get lucky might just make a person tired to their very soul.

There were many battered bards of the bottle in those days, but few were as committed to the cause as Mark Eitzel. First with American Music Club and then with his solo work, Eitzel seemed to save his sharpest songwriting chops for those instances when he was prepared to offer a consideration of the contours a life spent partially pondering the proof levels printed on the sides of bottles. It was hardly his only topic, but it was certainly his best. With every new collection of mordantly funny, downbeat songs, the surest route to finding the peak was scanning the wordy song titles until the one that promised a certain glossy-eyed poetry jumped out. There’s plenty of good stuff on 60 Watt Silver Lining, his first album after the break-up of American Music Club, but sure enough it’s the track with the word “Bartender” in it that makes the deepest impression.

Listen or download –> Mark Eitzel, “Some Bartenders Have the Gift of a Pardon”

(Disclaimer: It appears to me that 60 Watt Silver Lining is out of print as a physical object. It also appears it can be purchased digitally for a modest amount, but I suspect that Warner Bros. isn’t exactly working their hardest to make sure Eitzel gets his fair share of those purchases. Regardless, such commerce doesn’t do a thing to help the proprietor of your favorite local, independently-owned record. There are loads of fine releases with Eitzel’s handiwork on them that can purchased in such a way that makes every deserving individual a bit of scratch. Anyway, I feel okay about sharing this song here in this way. That doesn’t mean I won’t take it down if asked to do so by someone with due authority to make such a request. I surely will, promptly and happily.)