Adding AM_SILENT_RULES([yes]) to your configure.ac will greatly reduce the output of make. It will look very similar to the linux kernel build:

Making all in common
  CC     strlcat.o
  CC     strlcpy.o
  AR     libcompat.a
Making all in netconf/src/ncx
  CC     libncx_a-b64.o
  CC     libncx_a-blob.o
  CC     libncx_a-bobhash.o
  CC     libncx_a-cap.o

This line must go after your AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE initialization. You need to be using automake >= 1.11. There is a good explanation here.