The last time Mark Eitzel played in Vienna, it was to 30-odd people at the Chelsea on a wet Sunday night. Those lucky few witnessed a typically quixotic solo performance from Eitzel, delivering his intense songs in a seemingly casual but, in fact, incredibly crafted and passionate way. This month Eitzel is back in town with his group American Music Club, on the back of a new album, The Golden Age. While he probably doesn’t care all that much, I certainly hope for a larger audience this time. Eitzel is a knotty and intractable performer, self-deprecating to the point of embarrassment. For the most part, his songs lack identifiable choruses and hooks. But his voice is an instrument capable of truly wrenching displays of heartfelt emotion, and cuts through you with deadly precision. His group’s blank, neutral name speaks as eloquently of their music as The Band’s did of theirs; AMC inhabit the wide open spaces of American rock, with the guitar and rhythm section framing Eitzel’s searingly honest, confessionally driven lyrics.

Great double-header at B72 this month, with Japan’s Up-Tight and Vienna’s own Primordial Undermind presenting an evening of out-there psychedelic rock. Up-Tight lay down thick layers of guitar-heavy drones, their squalling mantras of noise building into a blissful cacophony that evokes prime-era Velvet Underground or Spacemen 3. And like the Velvets, Up-Tight are also partial to the odd eerily melancholic ballad, providing the listener with occasional respite from the sonic onslaught. Primordial Undermind are an equally bracing proposition, with long, spacey jams navigating the listener into the kind of inner headspace explored by pre-Dark Side Floyd. After 15-odd years of existence in America, leader and guitarist Eric Arn relocated the group to Vienna in 2005. Since then, they have released their sixth album Loss of Affect and continued to mine a richly creative seam of trippy, clangorous music.

Finally, gifted American folk singer Marissa Nadler makes her Vienna début early next month. “Folk” is a barely adequate term for what Nadler does, however. Her recently released third album, Songs III: Bird on the Water, pulsates with a haunted Gothic spirituality, its songs resonating with a deeply unsettling power and grace. Nadler plays acoustic guitar with all the glowing richness of Leonard Cohen or Bert Jansch, while the rapturous imagery of her lyrics chimes perfectly with the angelically pure beauty of her voice. “Oh what a day to dance with you,” she sings, “oh what a day to die”, summing up her songs’ swooning and radiant conflation of love, sex and death.