Compared with everything else I was buying at the time, American Music Club's 'Can You Help Me?' counts as a crowd-pleasing hit - Mark Eitzel's crew were critical darlings in the NME, Select and Vox, as well as in the inky fanzines I bought in the local record shop. Until I looked it up today I had no idea that 1994 was the eleventh year of their initial 12 year history: they sounded like classic 90s Americans to me.
What can one say? It's quite bland. If Cher from Clueless were here she'd definitely be listing it alongside Radiohead as 'complaint rock'. The Wikipedia entry for AMC suggests that they were a seminal influence on post-rock and 'slow core' (which conjures up the superlative Galaxie 500 and Low to me) but the single doesn't really do it. Sounds like something Beverley Hills 90210 would use as a teen breakdown montage.
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