Lover's Leap USA

AMG Review of Lover's Leap USA

Mark Deming
All Music Guide

In 1997, Mark Eitzel was planning a U.S. tour behind his album West, and since touring had never been an especially profitable venture for him, Eitzel decided to bring along some new merchandise to help him recoup his expenses. Rather than printing up the traditional T-shirts or souvenir books, Eitzel put together an album of unreleased songs which would be sold only at his live shows. The resultant Lover's Leap USA consisted of demos and session outtakes of thirteen songs that hadn't made the grade on his previous solo albums; only 500 copies were made, each featuring a doodle on the sleeve drawn personally by Eitzel himself, and while there were four variations on his one-paragraph liner notes (some featuring jokes about patriotism or the poor quality of the album), each featured the polite request to potential bootleggers, "Don't make any f--king copies of this. DON'T." As a result, Lover's Leap USA has become a highly sought after collector's item among Eitzel's small but passionately loyal circle of fans, though after a listen it's not difficult to see why this material didn't make the cut on one of Eitzel's "real" albums. Eitzel goes a bit far when he says "The first two songs are truly bad," but "Have no Words" and "The Big House" certainly aren't up to his usual high standards, and while there were more than a few examples of Eitzel's brilliance as a songwriter -- the quietly bitter "How Will You Face Yourself in Sleep," the witty but pained "Steve I Always Knew," and the cynical groove of "Nice Nice Nice" -- there's more filler and less top-shelf genius than one usually expects from him. Eitzel obviously wasn't done with this material yet, either; another take of "Sun Smog Seahorse" with different lyrics appeared on Caught in a Trap and I Can't Back Out 'Cause I Love You Too Much, Baby (released in 1998, but recorded in 1996), while the melodies for "Dream in Your Heart" and "Pay It Back" were recycled for (respectively) "Cold Light of Day" and "White Rosary" on the same album. As a souvenir for hardcore fans (which is what it was intended to be), Lover's Leap USA features a few pearly moments, and it deserves to be heard by a wider audience than 500 people, but it's hardly an essential release, and the unconverted needn't search it out.