From time to time, we like to present an overview of an artist's entire career up to that point. As we're more about the artistry than anything, we prefer to focus solely on the studio albums. This installment focuses on the career of Mark Oliver Everett, better known as the man behind Eels.
E - A Man Called E
I remember getting the promo copy of this record in the mail. At the time, I had a little fanzine that nobody read and must have been on the bottom rung of the promo list because the only promo copies I seemed to get from labels were albums by new artists they'd already given up on. I say that because most of the artists whose albums I received would never be heard from again.
Admittedly, I was smart enough to see the pattern by then and had begun to dread opening the envelopes that appeared in the mail. As something of a musician myself, I couldn't help feel that an artist's dreams and hopes were pinned to that album and, regardless of how good or bad the album was, a record company that had once thought highly enough of them to sign them and invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in the making of that record had cut them off at the knees before the starting gun had even sounded.
Thus, it was with these thoughts in mind that I took my first gander at
A Man Called E. Ugh, I remember thinking, a name like "E" is commercial suicide. That was also something I saw that a lot of the albums I received had in common - the artists all seemed to have chosen names that you knew just handicapped their chances of reaching the big time..."E", "Y Kant Tori Read", and so on.
While song titles like "Are You And Me Gonna Happen" and "Looking Out The Window With A Blue Hat On" gave me hope that the album wouldn't sound like the proverbial "assembly-line piece-of-shit", the album is ultimately marred by late 80's production techniques (i.e., reverb-drenched vocals, drum machine programming with little to no imagination).
I spun it a few times, found little to hang my hat on and promptly lost the album forever. Of course, I would revisit it, of course, and find that there are many signs of the man who would become "Eels" and that if you can get past the production and the fact that E's artistic aesthetic is a tad watered down by the rather by-the-numbers performances, it's not a bad album at all. Also, at the end of the day, "
Hello Cruel World" is a great way for any new artist to open an album, I don't care what you say.
E - Broken Toy Shop
I remember seeing this in the stores when it came out and thinking "Hmm, he got to make a second album...didn't see that one coming." Apparently, "Hello Cruel World" had gotten enough radio play to make the suits finance a second stab at the windmill. I didn't buy the album, didn't care to hear the album, and knew just from the looks of it that E's days with Polydor were numbered.
In listening to this record many years later only out of respect for the man who is now worldly recognized by the name Eels, it's easy to see that he'd amassed a backlog of songs prior to landing his deal, most of the good ones were used on his debut, and a lot of the weaker ones ended up on
Broken Toy Shop. Whereas most of the lyrical themes are fully-formed and brilliant on his debut, I am stunned by how half-baked this record sounds. Titles such as "
Manchester Girl" and "L.A. River", for example, sound like little more than songwriting exercises - someone who seems to be trying to write their way out of a dry spell rather than take a break.
Additionally, the hope and sly sense of humor so abundant on his debut is nowhere to be seen here. E just seems depressed, lethargic, and perhaps shell-shocked to have gotten the chance to make another record because he also sees the writing on the wall.
The album would be released to little fanfare, sell poorly, and lead to E's exit from the label. So seemingly ends the career of "A Man Called E".
Eels - Beautiful Freak
The year was 1996 and I was on the phone with an A&R guy at Geffen Records. I'd been sending him my demos, trying to get him to give my career the boost it sorely needed, and all he could talk about was the fact that he'd missed out on signing some band called "Eels". Despite losing the band to another label, the guy was genuinely excited about the upcoming release of the album. Heck, so was I until he mentioned that the singer of the band had released two albums under the name "E".
"Aw, crap," I said to myself.
Weeks later, though, on my first trip to L.A. to meet with said A&R guy and do a couple showcases, I heard a song on radio powerhouse KROQ that blew my hair back. The song was a heady mix of paranoia and disillusion wrapped up in a swirling cinematic musical cacophony that was one part Nirvana and one part campfire sing-along. When the DJ said, "That's brand new from Eels, it's called '
Novacaine For The Soul'," I instantly executed an illegal U-turn and made a bee-line for the local Wherehouse Music.
As is par for the course, they had already sold out of all the copies they had ordered (four). As I was asking when they'd have more copies in, I spotted an "in-store play" copy of the album sitting on the shelf behind the counter and pleaded with the clerk to sell it to me. He eventually did and I would listen to nothing else for the next several weeks, if not months.
To fully understand how completely inspired this record is, you need only listen to
Broken Toy Shop before popping in this record to see it for the completely rejuvenated tour de force that it is. E isn't the first artist to almost completely reinvent himself, but no single artist has done so more convincingly than Mark Oliver Everett.
In doing so, he created an album that still stands as one of the better offerings from the alt.rock explosion of the mid-90's. It's great when viewed as merely a nice collection of fuzzed-up pop songs, or a musical hand grenade disguised as a harmless rag doll. The musical and lyrical detail contained within paints a sometimes tragic, but always haunting portrait of the L.A. that exists beyond the glitz and glamor. You can almost smell the smog, taste the salt in the ocean air, and feel the sense of utter hopelessness that lies outside "Susan's House".
I remember thinking "How in the world is E ever gonna top this?"
Eels - Electro-Shock Blues
It must be something to be the last one standing, the rest of your immediate family dead or dying. Who the fuck do you call "in case of emergency" then? Who do you confide in when you've had a bad day? It seems from an early age, E has mostly confided in himself. That a man so insular could make an album this jarringly confessional astounds me. That his label let him put it out at all, much less exactly as he recorded it, astounds me even more. That they did is a testament to the fact that, while the rest of the industry had begun a screaming nosedive that would take them right into the side of a mountain, there were still some old school executives that recognized the importance of such artistry despite commercial limitations.
I mean, there's very little here that's suitable for in-store play at the supermarket. Still, I'd rather hear "
Cancer For The Cure" at the local Ralphs than some horrible string of cliches like Melissa Etheridge's "I Run For Life". Fuck, if I had a nickel for every time that song has soured my milk before I even got it home, but I digress...
The first time I played this album, I actually laughed out loud at the thought of the hundreds of thousand of fans around the world who'd dug "Beautiful Freak" all running to the record store to buy this new album, getting it home, and having their jaws hit the floor. "What the FUCK is this?", you can hear them say midway thru "Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor". If any of them made it far enough into the album to hear "My Descent Into Madness" (the album's fourth cut and arguably the most accessible song to be found), I applaud them.
As a result of this album, E and his band took themselves out of the alt.rock running altogether and settled into a lengthy career as "cult band" and those of us who've stuck around are the better for it. Those who jumped off here don't know what they're missin'. Of course, they don't care either, ignorance being bliss and all.
Eels - Daisies Of The Galaxy
Having picked himself up, dusted himself off, and whatnot, E seems in much better spirits on this, the third Eels record. Anyone who knows the amount of personal loss E has experienced is no doubt as amazed as I am that he found the way to do so. Even more amazing is how fucking cheerful this record seems despite the actual lack of any cheerful songs.
Hell, "
Grace Kelly Blues" leaves me imagining a jaunty stroll down some tree-lined street, birds singing in the trees, not a care in the world despite lyrics that depict no such scene.
Of course, this is to say nothing of the understated masterpiece that is "It's A Motherfucker". I remember seeing the title when I picked up the album and having to listen to this song first out of simple curiosity. Little did I know I would end the song in tears.
"It's a motherfucker being here without you/Thinkin' about the good times, thinking about the bad."
That first line, like the rest of the song, is so brilliant in its simplicity. Fuck the metaphors, E's understated, conversational asides hit home like a dump truck driving through a nitroglycerine factory.
The album itself is a stunning return to form after the major detour that was "Electro-Shock Blues". Granted, it isn't "Beautiful Freak, Pt 2", but it is the template for what would come to be known as "the Eels sound" - alternately dark and lighthearted ruminations set to tinkly pianos and kiddie song melodies. The band had experimented with such juxtaposition on their debut with "My Beloved Monster".
No surprise that it would be used to great effect in the first "Shrek" movie, which, of course, was a Dreamworks film. It only made sense to fill the soundtrack with artists from the Dreamworks label. This act of convenient symmetry turned into a huge stroke of luck for the Eels and further "Shrek" sequels have each featured music by the Eels, no doubt padding E's bank account in the process.
Eels - Souljacker
The Eels' fourth album,
Souljacker, is a hard album to get a bead on. The album title, the photo of a bearded E looking more like the Unabomber than a rock star holding a poodle, and the album opener "Dog Faced Boy" all seem to pointing at something, but what?
After two albums that were by and large the creation of one man, E, to quote Matthew Sweet, must have gotten a little "sick of himself" and started a new collaboration with John Parish (PJ Harvey) that resulted in the adding of a few new colors to the Eels' musical palette.
Musically, the album seems a tad scattershot, as if E started out wanting to turn up the guitars and howl at the moon, but then realized that it made for a very one-dimensional listening experience. He then throws in a song like "Woman Driving, Man Sleeping" because, well, you can't not throw in a track that good. Of course, to quote The Fixx, "one thing leads to another" and, voila, songs like "Jungle Telegraph" and "
Bus Stop Boxer" enter the fray. The end result is half an album that appeals to fans of noisy, blown out punk stomps and half an album that seems to exist only to appease those fans alienated by the other half.
Eels - Shootenanny
While
Souljacker showed E's desire to resurrect "the rock" with then-accomplice John Parish, but, to my ears, the songs lacked definition despite fine execution. On
Shootenanny, though, E takes matters into his own hands once again and the result is yet another fine return to form. Truth be told, "Saturday Morning" and "
Dirty Girl" are two of the better barn-burners E has unleashed.
Still, the man is 110% in his element on low-key, atmospheric numbers like "Love of The Loveless" and "Rock Hard Times".
If we could change one thing about the record, we'd have E ditch the megaphone vocal sound that gets way too much use on this record. Other than that, this is arguably E's most consistent record since his debut. At the same time, there is something about this record that whispers "contractual obligation" loudly enough to be heard between songs.
EELS - Blinking Lights & Other Revelations
As one of the most elaborate undertakings of his career,
Blinking Lights... features two full CD's of material recorded over the better part of a seven-year period and features the largest amalgamation of guests to ever appear on an Eels record, among them Peter Buck, Tom Waits, and John Sebastian to name but a few.
While the spiritual part of me applauds the dedication and perseverance E has shown in creating such an intensely personal, yet artistically expansive project, the rest of me thinks a whole lot of time and effort could have been saved by whittling this down to a concise single album. In doing so, it is this listener's opinion that whatever message E hoped to convey would have been driven home a lot more effectively.
Now, if this were truly a collection of diary entries, half-baked song ideas, and "things that just didn't fit on past records", that would be one thing, but, to my understanding, E worked tirelessly for a period of three years after
Shootenanny to make sure every single song was perfect. This, of course, came at great personal expense, I am told, and there was some question whether the album would ever see proper release.
It did, of course, finally finding a home at indie Vagrant Records, which had previously deviated from their mall punk aesthetic to sign Paul Westerberg a year prior.
The great thing about this album is that most everyone I've met who has the album agrees it would have made a better single album, yet we all have differing ideas about which songs would be contained on a single-album version. It was this realization that made me think that that was precisely E's intent in releasing the album in the first place. Just for shits and giggles, here is my track-listing and sequencing for a one-record version:
The Last Days of My Bitter Heart (edit out first minute)
If You See Natalie
Old Shit - New Shit
Trouble With Dreams
From Which I Came/A Magic World
The Other Shoe
To Lick Your Boots
Whatever Happened To Soy Bomb?
Hey Man (Now You're Really Living)
Losing Streak
Things The Grandchildren Should Know
Eels - Hombre Lobo
With the release of his ninth studio album (counting his first two solo efforts), E has officially earned the tag "veteran recording artist". Unfortunately, in most cases, by the time an artist reaches this point in their career, they suddenly begin sucking. It has happened to too many great artists to mention, but I'll mention some anyway...Cheap Trick (their ninth album was
The Doctor, which sucked), Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (ninth album:
She's The One didn't totally suck, but it was a huge step down from their early 80's output), U2 (
Pop was their ninth album...best known as the album where U2 scared off most of their audience). I could go on, but you get the point. For those who don't, most once-great artists totally lose the plot right around their ninth record because a) they've been millionaires for quite a while and, quite frankly, have learned to coast a bit, or b) are a million miles away, mentally speaking, from the hungry kid that wrote the songs that made them that first million.
Though his bank account has more zeroes than mine will ever see, E doesn't seem stricken by this malady. In fact, he and his current band of co-conspirators have made an album that's flat-out one of the best of his career. What truly sets this album apart from the rest of E's discography, though, is that you can tell he's having a ball making this record. I can't listen to "
Tremendous Dynamite" without joyfully laughing my ass off at the best Screaming Jay Hawkins impersonation I've heard in some time.
As a music geek, I tend to hold the greats to the high standards that they themselves set. As a result, what I find myself doing as I digest a new album by a great artist is imagine if this album had been released in place of the one that put them on the map. In the case of Tom Petty, for example, if I were to slide
She's The One in place of
Damn The Torpedoes, Petty and the boys would be looking for jobs in Gainesville by the end of '81.
In the case of Eels, if we slide this album in the place of
Beautiful Freak, while they are completely different albums from one another, you can totally see this album putting E on the map.
Sadly, at the time of this album's actual release, the industry is in such a sad state of affairs that an album like this will fall on mostly deaf ears in the US because radio can't be bothered to play it, MTV is too busy "glorifying the horrifying", and labels rely on game shows and TV karaoke contests for their latest batch of "stars".
Being well aware of the state of the industry, E could have simply chosen to take his money and go home, but nooooo, he assembles the most rock-solid Eels line-up ever and proceeds to thumb his nose at the world. Seriously, it sounds like somebody hooked up a brand-new car battery to E's nipples and keyed the ignition. Granted, the beards a little bit much by now - probably has more than a couple birds living in it, but fuck it, he's earned the right to look like a crazed auto mechanic with bodies buried out back.
Eels - End Times
E's "divorce album" is an understated, introspective affair that could have been a real bummer of a record, but if there's anyone who can see the humor in things falling apart, it is E.
If I can make a recommendation to anyone who hasn't yet discovered this record, buy yourself a great set of headphones - no, not a stupid-ass pair of ear buds - and a comfy motherfucker of a chair if you don't already have one. Borrow some bud from a friend if you don't have some and just fucking lose yourself in this record. Trying to "get" this record while fighting rush hour traffic or trying to multitask is just a waste of time, my friend. To really get to know it, give this record your undivided attention and I promise that you will thank me for it. Fuck that, thank E for it.
I hasten to even pick out particular songs that move me because cherry-picking is the last thing you should start doing with an album like this. What listeners should do is buy the album, turn off the cell phones and the laptops, and allow themselves to let this album take you on its journey away from the frivolous crap that has invaded our lives so completely. Having said this, I hope to whet your appetite with a little "
Gone Man".
Eels - Tomorrow Morning
When I was a kid, most bands put out two albums a year. Let me tell you, those days were the fucking bomb, as opposed to the precedent that was set in the 90's where bands put out a new record every few years so their label could milk the absolute fuck out of it. E no doubt remembers those halcyon days of the 70's the same as I do and must figure that since he really has no label second-guessing his every move, he can damn well put out two albums this year if he feels like it.
If you ask me, E has seemed a little restless since
Shootenanny (as "I'm a Hummingbird" seems to indicate, with lines like "I'm a hummingbird, floating tree to tree/I'm a hummingbird, beautiful and free.") I hate to use that tired shark metaphor, but it applies, so bear with me. What keeps E alive and kicking is the fact that he never stops moving, or, in his case, creating. The minute you start repeating yourself, though, that's not creating, that's repeating and it can be the death of you as an artist. E knows this and it is what keeps him going, but every so often, he allows himself to make the sort of album that just comes naturally, effortlessly, and free of any forced agendas.
Take a song like "
Spectacular Girl", which sounds very much like the stereotypical Eels song that we've come to know and love over the years. While the song most certainly covers familiar terrain, it is the minor perfections that E has made it that ultimately refine it to the point of near-perfection. To E, though, perfection is the proverbial carrot dangled just out of reach, never to be caught, but he (and we) have come to embrace the beauty that is often found in imperfection.
This is such an album.
For fans both new and old,
Tomorrow Morning is like catching up with an old friend you bump into unexpectedly and a five-minute chat turns into an entire afternoon on the front porch with no particular place to be. The sun is just coming up as you drop the needle on "In Gratitude For This Magnificent Day" and, as the last strains of the jubilant "Mystery Of Life", the final vestiges of sunlight do their last dance upon the horizon before being chased down by darkness.
