Peter Milton Walsh (Apartments)(AUS) + Mark Eitzel (American Music Club)

Saturday 22nd February promises to be a special Saturday night in winter with an 8.30pm solo show by Australian singer/songwriter of The Apartments, Peter Milton Walsh.
The music of The Apartments has been described by The Guardian as “of another time: post-punk, certainly, but also of Burt Bacharach and Jacques Brel; Françoise Hardy and Serge Gainsbourg.”
Robert Forster of The Go-Betweens describes Walsh as a man who came with “whispers and claims on his trail…Peter would have to be the only person of male gender to inspire two Go-Betweens songs—That Way, and Don't Let Him Come Back. Needless to say, I am a fan.”
Walsh founded The Apartments in Brisbane in 1978, and while the band broke up the next year and Walsh headed for New York, he went on to record The Apartments debut album ‘the evening visits…’ for English label Rough Trade Records in 1985.
So began The Apartments long and successful European career spanning more than 30 years and 10 albums. Walsh has most recently toured France, Portugal and Italy on a run of solo and duet shows.
One of the tour highlights was a show at Les Vinzelles, a stunning music venue in the French countryside. A film crew recorded the show, described by many in the audience as one of the shows of the year in France. For a taste of The Apartments songs and Walsh, here’s Pocketful of Sunshine from The Apartments last album, In and Out of the Light, recorded that night at Les Vinzelles.

Mark Eitzel’s tenth solo album and his first in three years, Hey Mr Ferryman, was released on January 27, 2017, by Decor & Merge Records. Hey Mr Ferryman features the vivid melodies long associated with Eitzel’s former band American Music Club (aka AMC), which remains a cult favorite to this day, as well as Butler’s distinctive guitar that serves to complement Eitzel’s expressive vocals.
Of that voice, Pitchfork once wrote: “If Leonard Cohen’s voice is a story about the passage of time and Levon Helm’s is a story about losing what is most precious to you, Eitzel’s is about the circuitous roads we take in search of ourselves.”
As both a solo artist and the frontman for AMC, Mark Eitzel is a celebrated lyricist and champion of the downtrodden. A hauntingly evocative singer, he has earned even greater notoriety for his brilliance as a composer, combining the intensity of Ian Curtis, the pastoral beauty of Nick Drake, and the melodrama of Scott Walker and Jacques Brel to build one of the most impressive and darkly poetic bodies of song in the modern pop canon. “
The songs on this record are about celebrating musicians and music, about misogyny, the long shadow of history, getting one’s head out of one’s ass,” quips Eitzel on the themes of Ferryman. “Also oceans, blood, skies, hearts, gay pioneers, carpenters, weeping women, and how death waits for you even in the happiest place on earth: Las Vegas.”
“As I wrote these songs, I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles; painted two houses; spent all my money; threw away everything I owned; traveled to and from London, New York; performed various shows; gained and lost and gained 20 pounds; went to the doctor a lot; moved to the mountains; moved to New York; and ran my car into the ground,” continues Eitzel.

Mark Eitzel has released over 15 albums of original material with American Music Club and as a solo artist. The Guardian has called him “America’s greatest living lyricist,” and Rolling Stone once gave him their Songwriter of the Year award. Originally formed in 1983, AMC released seven albums before breaking up in 1995. The band reunited in 2004 for two full-lengths, Love Songs for Patriots and The Golden Age.

Host or Publisher Make Out Room