Eels, End Times
Featured Album
E goes back to the attic for these shambling charmers
Mark Oliver Everett isn’t much of a singer and his lyrics tend toward the maudlin but the man called E has had an oddly rewarding career: he's one of the only authors of a '90s alt-radio hit that still gets reviewed in mainstream publications. People feel very strongly about at least two of his records: 2005's ambitious spiritual undertaking Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, and 1998's elegiac Electro-Shock Blues. His music is oddly comforting — lots of tried-and-true chord progressions, attic-level sonics with the occasional broken instrument to match. Even some of his goofiest numbers are good for a bonbon, like the groovy “Saturday Morning” and the porch-whistled “I Like Birds.” And for a former one-hit wonder he’s surprisingly bankable: within the last five years alone he's issued a double-disc, a live album (with strings!), a best-of, a(nother) b-sides disc and last year a plain ol' new record, Hombre Lobo, which paid homage to Cuban cigars on the cover and made for a relatively streamlined listen on the inside.
End Times is another Eels album, one even more attic-addicted, with mostly solo acoustics done lo-fi on 4-track, quite slow and lacking an obvious entry point like the last album's good-time truckin' “Prizefighter.” Maybe the crunchy, distracted “Unhinged,” definitely the purty “Little Bird,” which makes its point in one perfectly regretful cliché: “Goddamn…miss that girl.” The pocket-Allman Brothers choogler “Gone Man” tries the damnedest to liven up his bummed monotone. Most of these songs are exercises — outtakes and unused junk from Hombre Lobo. Even with the odd-placed cello or drumbeat, these are unmistakably from-the-bedroom. Considering the decade-end premonition in its title, you could safely call End Times comfort food for the apocalypse.
