Eitzel's first solo album was the (now elusive) cassette-only 'Mean Mark Eitzel Gets Fat' (1982), which pre-dates his AMC work. He released a solo live album, songs of love live in 1991, featuring raw and emotional acoustic versions of his best AMC songs. His first solo album proper was 1996's 60 Watt Silver Lining, a highly personal, jazz-inflected work.
He went on to release albums of varying styles and quality, including another difficult-to-find effort in Lover's Leap USA, produced as a tour-only CD and notable for including two songs which Eitzel's own sleeve notes instruct the listener to skip past. This was followed by 1997's West, a collaboration with REM's Peter Buck, and the stark and harrowing Caught in a Trap and I Can't Back Out 'Cause I Love You Too Much, Baby in 1998. 2001 saw him take a new electronic direction with The Invisible Man, followed in 2002 by two covers projects: Music for courage & confidence and The Ugly American, which included re-interpretations of American Music Club songs by Eitzel and a traditional Greek band!
american music club reformed in 2003, and released an album, Love Songs for Patriots, as well as touring the United States and Europe. Eitzel released new solo material in 2005, candy ass, which saw a return to the electronic experimentation of the invisible man. A new AMC record, The Golden Age was released in February 2008.
The Mark Eitzel discussion list Firefly can be found at http://mail.neurotica.com/mailman/listinfo/firefly
Wild Sea
Mark Eitzel Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
A head filled with shopping lists and politics
And a hollow eggshell kind of frailty
Pulling himself back together like desperate wishes
Into the wild sea that moans and boils
Filled with old ghosts and a whole other language
Uncoiling forever
Indecent and foreign
The song of Darwin and dismay
The wild sea rises higher
Heavier it rushes down on him
It was invited, it was not unwelcome
His fear was just a 60 watt silver lining
Shining from the edges of his crying
Teaching him its frozen prayers
Distant as the next second
Far as any distant land's future on the horizon
He's laughing in the ocean
Laughing in the ocean
Laughing in the ocean
All his life was a gesture
A check paid in dirty dishes
Listen to the sea wind, hear how it hisses
As it rolls over all your vain petty wishes
And your sweet passionate kisses
The wild, wild sea
Forever dumb, it has no memory
Just a replay of your complicated amnesty
As it rolls over rocks and weed breaking your birdcage
And your poet's pages
And all your drowned words
That were just death threats and unpaid debts
And leaves you breathless and peaceful for a while
And you think your heart is without hate for a while
And you think your soul is without hate for a while
And your body was an animal that loved to hide
See the source of your heart buried deep in the tide
See the source of your heart singing from the tide
Lonely joy
Lonely joy
Tears of joy
The source of your heart deep in the undertow
Hidden tongues and hidden hands pulling you from below
To the source of your pain
The source of your pain in the undertow
Mark Eitzel’s song Wild Sea is an introspective and melancholic piece that delves into the themes of emptiness, fear, decay, and isolation. The opening lines set the tone of the song, mentioning the singer's hollowness and fragile state, unable to come to terms with his innermost desires and anxieties, resulting in a mind filled with shopping lists and politics. The second stanza alludes to the singer trying to fix the fragments of his life with desperate wishes, succumbing to the wild sea's moans and boils, teeming with old ghosts and a foreign language. The laws of decay, coined as Darwin and dismay, metaphorically hint at the changes in his world and the fear of confronting them.
The wild sea is a recurring theme throughout the song, portrayed as a force that rises higher, heavier, and rushes over the singer, leaving him breathless yet peaceful. The sea, without a memory, rolls over anything in its path, including the singer's futile wishes and poet's pages, suggesting an all-encompassing power that overwhelms the human spirit.
The song’s character is not entirely hopeless, as he laughs in the ocean, finding joy in his loneliness encapsulating the concept of the "Lonely Joy." The song concludes with the singer's pained search for the source of his heart that lies buried deep in the undertow, torn between the emotions of love and hate.
Line by Line Meaning
Inside he's empty
The singer feels empty inside
A head filled with shopping lists and politics
His head is full of mundane thoughts about shopping and politics
And a hollow eggshell kind of frailty
He feels weak and fragile, like a shell without substance
Pulling himself back together like desperate wishes
Attempting to put himself back together again, like trying to make a desperate wish come true
Into the wild sea that moans and boils
He delves into the tumultuous and unpredictable ocean
Filled with old ghosts and a whole other language
The sea is populated by ghosts and speaks a language that he doesn't understand
Uncoiling forever
The ocean seems to never end, unraveling endlessly
Indecent and foreign
It appears unfamiliar and disturbing
Welcome to the laws of decay
He confronts the inevitability of decay and decline
The song of Darwin and dismay
This is the story of evolution and failure
The wild sea rises higher
The ocean becomes increasingly fierce
Heavier it rushes down on him
It feels as though the weight of the ocean is crashing upon him
It was invited, it was not unwelcome
He has invited this experience, it is not unwelcome to him
His fear was just a 60 watt silver lining
The only upside was the glimmer of fear he experienced from the situation
Shining from the edges of his crying
His tears are a tangible expression of his emotional state
Teaching him its frozen prayers
He learns from the ocean's unyielding, immutable nature
Distant as the next second
The ocean seems far away, almost in another dimension
Far as any distant land's future on the horizon
As hard to reach as the far-off horizon or a distant future
He's laughing in the ocean
Despite everything, he finds humor in the situation
All his life was a gesture
His whole life seems meaningless
A check paid in dirty dishes
All the effort he's made amounted to nothing more than washing dirty dishes
Listen to the sea wind, hear how it hisses
The artist is aware of the ocean's power and ferocity
As it rolls over all your vain petty wishes
The ocean destroys all his selfish and insignificant desires
And your sweet passionate kisses
His romantic relationships are equally unimportant to the power of the sea
The wild, wild sea
The ocean is both fierce and unpredictable
Forever dumb, it has no memory
The ocean is not capable of remembering anything that happens within it
Just a replay of your complicated amnesty
The singer is confronted with the idea that his actions are ultimately meaningless and will be erased with the tides
As it rolls over rocks and weed breaking your birdcage
The ocean crushes everything in its path, including the artist's sense of security
And your poet's pages
The ocean's power is no respecter of creativity or beauty
And all your drowned words
The ocean devalues language and communication, leaving him with nothing to say
That were just death threats and unpaid debts
His words were ultimately hollow and meaningless
And leaves you breathless and peaceful for a while
Even while leaving him powerless, the ocean can provide a sense of tranquility
And you think your heart is without hate for a while
The ocean can briefly trick him into believing he's without anger
And you think your soul is without hate for a while
That emotionality that's troubling him can be temporarily quieted by the power of the ocean
And your body was an animal that loved to hide
There was a part of him that felt at peace hidden away within the safety of his sense of himself, but that is not true anymore
See the source of your heart buried deep in the tide
He has an opportunity to see his true self reflected in the turbulent depths of the ocean
See the source of your heart singing from the tide
He hears echoes of his true desires in the powerful, crashing waves of the ocean
Lonely joy
The feeling of happiness or satisfaction that can come from confronting the loneliness or fear within oneself
Lonely joy
This is a phrase repeated meaning that's it's something worth pursuing
Tears of joy
There is beauty in the heavy emotions he is feeling
The source of your heart deep in the undertow
The depths of his own experience become reflected in the depths of the ocean
Hidden tongues and hidden hands pulling you from below
There are forces beneath the surface that shape our perspectives and shape the world around us
To the source of your pain
He is beckoned towards a deeper understanding of his pain
The source of your pain in the undertow
He needs to confront the darkness within him that shapes his perception of the world around him
Contributed by Gabriella F. Suggest a correction in the comments below.