Hey Mr Ferryman

Hey Mr Ferryman, like his last record Don’t Be A Stranger, has a lightness of touch about it that may shock those who only know him from the often tortured AMC.

This is smart, passionate music, as strong musically as it is lyrically, and like so much of Eitzel's work, if it isn't always hopeful, it's full of a humanity that shines out through the darkness.

This is smart, meditative music that needs the appropriate time to vest, where further listening provides new perspectives and details that weren’t as apparent at first glance. That Eitzel has managed to deliver some of his strongest work in thirty plus years is testament to his growing confidence, and provides another compelling reason to be considered a notable figure in the veteran class of folk artists like Mark Kozelek and Will Oldham.

Even more consistently inspired than Eitzel's previous two, excellent solo albums (2009's Klamath and Don't Be A Stranger from 2012), Hey Mr Ferryman demands that Eitzel is at last granted at least as much attention and acclaim as his fellow songwriting Mark, former Red House Painters-leader Kozelek.

While his American Music Club era(s) saw Eitzel canonised as the heart-wrenching, torture singer of love and fury, Hey Mr. Ferryman continues in the vein of 2012’s Don’t Be A Stranger, in lessening the self-laceration in favour of a far more reasoned and, dare I say, pop-friendly approach.

Hey Mr. Ferryman has all the mastery you'd expect from someone ten solo albums deep, and more fresh energy than you even hoped for.

The beautifully rendered character portraits of Hey Mr Ferryman, shaped into gorgeous studies of sympathy by Bernard Butler’s production, are compelling in their starkness, their raw, unchecked humour, and their kindness toward people who, as Eitzel says, are looking for “something that will lead them to light and safety”.

Hey Mr Ferryman is a very lovely thing indeed.

In all, Hey Mr. Ferryman is a welcome return from one of America’s most consistently challenging and rewarding songwriters. It’s an album that creeps up on you slowly, its hooks subtle but, once set, inescapable.

Eitzel’s glass-half-empty attitude ... grips the songs too tightly ... But when singer and producer work together, the results are scarily sharp.