Clearly, New York based popster Eytan Mirsky doesn’t care much for changing his musical style with each new album. His previous effort ‘Get Ready for Eytan!’ was filled with the kind of toe-tapping, melodic pop that evoked memories of the likes of Candy and Elvis Costello, and thankfully his latest opus ‘Was It Something I Said?’ shows that the onset of a new Millennium hasn’t altered his penchant for writing top-notch pop.
In fact, in repeating the winning formula of its predecessor, this album is something of an improvement upon it. The great melodies still remain, as do the wickedly perceptive and humorous lyrics, but overall the quality of the songs seems better.
With an irrepressible melody and structure, ‘When Good Girls Go Bad’ is a masterclass in how to write the 3 minute pop song and will be as addictive to pop fans as Viagra is to Hugh Hefner. Although entirely appropriate, I don’t think the titles for ‘Just Another In A Long Long Line’ or ‘Can’t Make Up My Mind’ were inspired by Mr Hefner’s penchant for similar looking blondes, but they are great songs just the same. The former is the kind of bouncy pop-rock that Mirsky has down to a fine art and simple, yet effective lyrics as ‘If you don’t want me/that’s nothing new/ I’ve been rejected/by better girls like you’ just add to the joy.
His songs are still full of funny, down-on-their-luck characters who can’t get laid to save their lives, but Mirsky’s unique brand of clever lyrical pessimism encompasses a wider picture this time around, especially on the superb ‘Human Being’ complete with lyrics like: ‘Man crawled out of the jungle/put on a jacket and tie/started civilisation/somebody tell me why’ for those particularly bad days at the office. Proof of every band’s major motivation is found in ‘Meet Some Girls’ and the rocking ‘Payback’ is a novel take on how to heal the pain of a broken relationship.
As well as the characters, the musicians remain first class, and once again Larry Saltzman’s guitar adds real spice to the songs and even former Suzanne Vega guitarist John Gordon joins in the fun on a number of tracks.
The production isn’t as crisp as ‘Get Ready For Eytan!’, and some might say that the album is a little overcrowded with 16 tracks, but save for the occasional lapse, songs like the standout ‘Can I Get Any Lower?’ and ‘I Just Wanna Be Your Steve McQueen’ (the soundtrack to the film ‘The Tao of Steve’) prove that Mirsky’s 2 minute treasures never outstay their welcome.
Some musicians aren’t happy unless they’re tampering with their style and ‘growing musically’, but whilst he’s making great pop albums like this, there’s no reason for Mirsky to make an album of industrial grunge music. Even if he did though, I bet he could still make it a whole lot of fun.

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