Eels - End Times (Dreamworks)
3/5
By: Matt Tomiak
It might have taken him eight albums to get there, but it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that Eels lynchpin Mark “E” Everett, long-term chronicler of the painfully autobiographical, should be giving the break-up record a go.
Eels’ 1996 debut Beautiful Freak arrived concurrently with the mainstream breakthroughs of revered alt-rockers DJ Shadow and Beck, sharing their kaleidoscopic eclecticism but displaying a skewed, often despairingly bleak worldview of its very own. The follow-up, 1998’s career-best Electro-Shock Blues was a devastating tour de force, detailing Everett’s family's experiences with terminal disease, suicide and insanity, shot through with a streak of pitch-black humour (the lyrics sheet in the liner notes came prefaced with a mockingly cheerful exhortation to “SING ALONG AT HOME” in spite of such titles as ‘Going To Your Funeral’ and ‘My Descent Into Madness.’)
And now his bird's naffed off, so things aren't much jollier on End Times. The bummed-out 'Nowadays' and the wearily woebegone title track bring to mind the granddaddy of hangdog introversion, Neil Young, and more specifically Shakey's run of desolate, anesthetized mid-70s LPs On the Beach, Tonight's the Night and Zuma. Nevertheless, that ghoulish drollery is still present and correct on 'Paradise Blues', a flippant 12-bar rocker worthy of Stephin Merritt in which Everett sings from a suicide bomber's perspective. It's just about the most cheerful thing here.
Artists in this article: Eels
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