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Avg: 4.0 (579 ratings)
- Date Released: June 2, 2009
- Genre: Rock/Pop
- Style: Indie Rock
- Label: Vagrant Records
Everett's hairy outsider howls for everyone who's loved and lost
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We Say...
For his seventh Eels album, frontman Mark Everett documents the frustration of a lone wolf eager to capture his idealized Goldilocks (who may or may not be a blonde). As he admits in his eMusic interview, this alt-rocker-turned-cult-hero overlaps so substantially with his titular protagonist that a casual listener might not notice that he's simply playing a role. More than a mere concept album, Hombre Lobo is rather a bipolar collection of unrequited love songs. Swinging from Apollonian and Dionysian extremes, the album plays like a mixtape designed to appeal to its recipient's sentimental and sensual sides. "Prizefighter" announces a clean break from Everett's previous studio album, 2005's chamber music extravaganza Blinking Lights and Other Revelations with a strutting blues riff; the tender but equally yearning second track, "The Look You Give That Guy," finds E veering between a wounded inner-child falsetto and a seasoned groan. It's the cry of a lonely coot determined not to let another beloved slip through his calloused fingers.
Tempos vary, but the pacing remains brisk while the instrumentation sticks to skeletal guitar, bass and drums. This simplicity suits its subject, and the restraint allows Everett to go out on a limb emotionally: Like many highly motivated one-way lovers, his anti-hero seems to be one restraining order away from jail, and the singer deftly throws in an occasional goofy line to break the tension. "Being the bomb is her birthright," he quips through his trademark vocal distortion on "Tremendous Dynamite." If you're single and not happy about it, openhearted ballads like "All the Beautiful Things" may provoke some tears. But there's an optimism in this loco lobo's determination, and it peaks in "Beginner's Luck," with a rockin' marriage proposal that's neither corny nor glib. Everett's hairy outsider howls for everyone who's loved and lost. -
They Say...
Four years ago, Eels frontman and songwriter E penned a collection of intimate, often gentle, and very revealing songs called Blinking Lights and Other Revelations. It reflected songs of personal experience and the human spirit. But E, aka Mark Oliver Everett, never seems to look at things the same way twice. In many ways, Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire is the mirror image of that album. And, as Everett himself claims, this one is more about animal instinct. That's fair enough as far as it goes, but this recording, while reflecting a more primal side of human experience as it engages the primacy of desire, actually recalls -- and feels like an extension of -- the song "Dog Faced Boy" from Souljacker. That kid, caught in his loneliness because of his difference, seems to be speaking -- albeit as a grownup -- through many of the songs here. His difference is both his gift and his curse and he understands both sides. He's finding his loneliness to be both the bane of his existence and his strength to survive and succeed in finding love no matter what. His protagonist, through thoroughly human, is still regarded as an animal because of his hirsute appearance, and he deals with that in these 12 songs with tenderness, rage, and reckless abandon. The sound of the album seems divided in two, the brazenly rockist set betraying the side of animal instinct in all its guises, from anger to wanton lust, desperation, and swaggering self-confidence, with E using resolute raw, distorted roots rock ("Prizefighter"); piledriving, careening garage rock ("Liliac Breeze"and "What's a Fella Gotta Do"); howling raucous blues ("Tremendous Dynamite"); and the brilliant boasting pomposity portrayed by distorted pop/rock ("Beginner's Luck"). Then there's the other half, meant to portray the very human face of the ache that desire causes. These nakedly sensitive, embarrassingly frank ballads literally pour tenderness and reveal the other side of "Prizefighter." They begin with the self-explanatory wish revealed in the simple four-chord "That Look You Give That Guy" and continue with the lilting "In My Dreams"; the somber, minor-key waltz called "The Longing"; the midtempo pop disappointment that is "My Timing Is Off" (perhaps the finest song on the record); and the resolute truth and acceptance in "Ordinary Man," where he speaks to the absent object of his desire and gives her the benefit of the doubt that on "Another warm day, in the city of cold hearts.../You, you're not like that.../And you seem like you could appreciate the fact/That I'm no ordinary man." Ultimately there's the thread of hope, because the instinct of desire brings it to us in so many different ways, and E understands this better than most. This is a beautifully crafted, stripped-down recording, showcasing once more that E uses searing honesty and a canny sense of pop, rock, blues, and everything else to chronicle his own strange path through life and its labyrinth -- he combines them all with an endearing craziness that most of us feel every day, but dare not speak of. He may be a loopy poet and songwriter, but here, as is his norm, he's spot-on and a joy to listen to.
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| 01. |  |
Prizefighter |
2:54 |
|
| 02. | |
That Look You Give That Guy |
4:16 |
|
| 03. | |
Lilac Breeze |
2:36 |
|
| 04. | |
In My Dreams |
3:23 |
|
| 05. | |
Tremendous Dynamite |
2:46 |
|
| 06. | |
The Longing |
4:23 |
|
| 07. | |
Fresh Blood |
4:26 |
|
| 08. | |
What's A Fella Gotta Do |
3:26 |
|
| 09. | |
My Timing Is Off |
2:59 |
|
| 10. | |
All The Beautiful Things |
2:23 |
|
| 11. | |
Beginner's Luck |
3:37 |
|
| 12. | |
Ordinary Man |
3:15 |
|
12 Total Tracks, 40:24 Total Length
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Credits
- Lisa Glines - Design // Autumn DeWilde - Photography // Dan Pinder - Engineer // Dan Pinder - Mixing
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