Unknown Knight of Indie Music

Mark Eitzel could be one of today’s best musicians you have never heard of

MARK EITZEL is 58 and, I guess like many of uswho’ve managed to be alive approximately those many years, heading day by day towards the next milestone, 60, he thinks sometimes (if not often) of mortality. Eitzel is what critics nowadays call a ‘singer-songwriter’, those who write and perform their own songs in popular music. I find that label intriguing because, heck, unless it’s someone who performs only what other people have composed, nearly everyone is a singer song writer! But Eitzel does write the songs he sings. And they are bitingly trenchant; he’s critical of many things, and often melancholic too. But he has a voice of a commanding quality and it is easy to like his songs the first time you hear them.