So today, the EELS released a best-of and a rarities collection. They're pretty good starting points for the uninitiated and for fans, you get all of their videos, some hard-to-find unreleased treats and their Lollapalooza '06 set on DVD. I'm a pretty big fan of Mr. Mark Oliver Everett and his recordings and have been for some time. I think they were dismissed early on as post-Beck alt-rock also-rans, being pushed onto the public by the then-fledgling DreamWorks label. But they never became huge and were maybe too weird for the MTV masses and I think a lot of music geeks ignored them as being too commercial. Thus, EELS have always existed in sort of a no man's land somewhere in between the two and consequently, E has become one of the most underrated songwriters of the past 10 years.

So obviously, the EELS' catalogue doesn't rival The Who or The Kinks... but I thought I'd steal a page from other SOMBies and gonna go through each album chronologically and maybe give sort of an EELS 101 History lesson along the way. I'll start tomorrow with Beautiful Freak.

noice.

Just don't subject us to MC Honky, please.

I wasn't gonna include that, actually.

I'm going to download the comp to get a taster. One of those bands I always wanted to hear but never took the time. Have Last Stop: This Town on a compilation and have always loved it. Novocaine For The Soul is probably the only other song I'd know, but we'll see. Looking forward to it!

Interesting band/artist. They swing pretty wildly back and forth from being an awesome band (Electro-Shock Blues) to a terrible one (Shootenanny).

Are you planning on reviewing the new rarities comp? How about any of the live albums they've released?

hey now, shootenanny's not so bad.

Shootnenanny is fucking great man. One of the greatest shows I've ever seen.

this is going to be a great thread.

Love the Eels. I was hoping of a compilation since he has quite a few albums out. What depressing lyrics though. That guy has been thru some hard times.

That live performance that came out in 2006? Great stuff there.

rock hard times.

lol get it?!

ugh.ill say that i will get a tad uninterested in teh band when e finally got happy. but electro shock blues remains one of my favourite albums ever. and boy, they are indeed a consistent band.

my girlfriend got me into the eels. she was all like "if you like the flaming lips you'll like the eels."

things the grandchildren should know is an awesome song let me tell ya what.

Ok, so this guy named Mark Oliver Everett moved to L.A., christened himself "E" and wrote some pretty nice pop songs. He got a record deal with Polydor. He released a pair of solo albums (which we're skipping for now, but may come back to if there's interest). He opened for Tori Amos. And the world didn't seem to care. Polydor dropped E in 1993. E would form Eels with "Butch" Jonathan Norton and Tommy Walter years later. Dubbed Eels so that they'd be next to E's solo albums in record shops, E later realized that that strategy wouldn't really work unless record stores didn't carry the Eagles or Earlimart. In 1996, three super-powerful rich guys got together and the DreamWorks record label was born. They signed Randy Newman, Rollins Band, George Michael and their big cutting-edge newcomers..... Eels.



This is, as E would later say, the Eels' "greeting card to the world". There is no getting around the fact that this record sounds very of its time. In 1996, we were living in a post-Beck world and we were all post-Beck girls (or boys). For the record, it should be noted that many of the BF songs were written & recorded as far back as '92 (long before the Becksplosion of 1994). So yeah, this is a record from those alt-rock '90's. But don't let that deter you. This is much more interesting and less dated than say, a Sponge or Bush record. A lot of these songs still hold up for me. "Novocaine For the Soul" has outlived its one-hit wonder status well. And though "Susan's House" starts like a Soul Coughing song, when it reveals its yacht-pop piano heart, it still hooks me. As '90s alt-rock as they sound, I still dig the guitar tones used in "Rags to Rags" and "Not Ready Yet". A glance at the song titles on this record should tell you why it was a mistake to market this band as another alt-rock good time. I'm not a huge fan of the second half of this disc, which sort of focuses on the piano-pop side of E. "Spunky" is definitely a pretty piano pop ballad worth hearing. And there's the Shrek-approved "My Beloved Monster". But this is one of those albums that feels like a collection of songs. There's no cohesive feeling of an album. You do get a sense of E's cynical-but-sweet heart and his penchant for knowing how to write a good pop song. Detractors have said his lyrics have been "adolescent" what with their "life sucks" angle and sometimes, they kind of are. But he'd do better.

So DreamWorks pushed the Eels onto the public, focusing on the more upbeat and "rock" songs as international singles. "Novocaine For the Soul" was a minor MTV hit. They toured like crazy. E was hardly sleeping, not having much fun being forced to make videos he didn't like and having nervous breakdowns. E would later call this "least favorite era" of the Eels. In 1996, E's older sister Elizabeth killed herself. E's mother was diagnosed with lung cancer (later succumbing in 1998). The Eels' roadie, Spider, and several of E's friends died. Having discovered his father dead in his bed at 19, E was now the only surviving member of his immediate family. Suddenly it seemed that if any musician had the right to sing about how much life sucks, it was E.

Coming tomorrow: Electro-Shock Blues

i really havent listened to this record for a while, mainly because of what you said - very dated sound -= but it was basically the only thing i listened to for a good three months onbe summer. not that thats bad.

when they performed at lolla and did that monster version of not ready yet (on of my faves) i remembered how fucking great the band is. ugh, i love them. i cant wait for paves to come in here and make fun of me,.

that was my number one that year

This thread is useless without a side of salmon.

What about the album just by E? Not sure the title and too lazy to look it up.

A Man Called (E)
its okay. very eels, very early 90s. sounds kinda dated. but 'you are the scarecrow' is great

"If Beautiful Freak was our greeting card to the world, then Electro-Shock Blues is the phone call in the middle of the night that the world doesn't want to answer." -- E, 1998.



So E's family have all passed on, as have several friends. Life seems pretty shitty. So E wrote an album about dealing with death. But it's not just about death: it's about life. It is an often bleak and heartbreaking album that dips into some dark emotional waters, but ultimately it's a life-affirming hell of an album. It is my sincere hope that if this thread leads to anything, it's that a few of you kind souls will read my hyperbolic lunatic rave about this album and go buy a copy of this. After all, E's not a millionaire. It is one of my favorite albums to be released in the last decade and it is E's masterpiece. You know how people talk about It's a Wonderful Life? How it makes them cry, but in the end, it fills them with a sense that life is important and that maybe everything is gonna be okay? That's how I feel about Electro-Shock Blues. It's hard for me to listen to this album front-to-back and not get choked up at the end. It starts sparse with "Elizabeth On the Bathroom Floor", a song based a diary entry of his dead sister's. In the next song, E is going to his sister's funeral in a song that begins haunted, but ultimately has a pretty sweet singalong chorus. Confessional music has gotten a bad rap in recent years thanks to bland singer/songwriters and overwrought emo boys. But when done right, there's nothing more cathartic than someone baring their soul. ESB is definitely more Plastic Ono Band and "Serve the Servants" than (name your culprit here). Over the course of this album, E buries his sister, looks back on his life, watches his mother deteriorate with terminal cancer and deals with these losses while trying to deal with his own descent into madness. But instead of just whining over some melancholy chords forever, E bounces from majesty to terror, from sparse, almost creepy piano pieces to acoustic guitar-led gems ("Dead of Winter", "Climbing to the Moon"), jazzy freak-outs ("Hospital Food") and the twisted pop of "Last Stop: This Town".

From 3 Speed:

Life is funny, but not ha-ha funny - peculiar, I guess.
You think I got it all goin' my way.
Then why am I such a fucking mess?

While there's no shortage of darkness on the album, it's not a total downer. The mood improves over the course of the record, as E begins to see some light. I've never heard E mention what "Last Stop: This Town" is about but I've always thought it's about E choosing to positively cope with the deaths by imagining his deceased families as ghosts "flying on down for the last stop to this town" to say hello. In "Climbing to the Moon", E goes back to visiting his sister in a mental health facility before her death. This sounds like a wrist-slitter, but it's an absolutely lovely song - as good, as well-written and as beautiful as anything Jeff Tweedy has written in the past 15 years. "Dead of Winter" watches E's mother succumb to cancer ("radiation sore throat got your tongue/magic markers tattoo you/and show where to aim/ and strangers break their promises/'you won't feel any....you won't feel any pain'") over another wistful melody and "The Medication Is Wearing Off" features a melancholy guitar line that you will be doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-ing along to all day. To top things off, you have the somewhat unfortunately-titled "P.S. You Rock My World", wherein E decides that even if your loved ones are gone... there's still something to live for. Even if that something may be uncertain. "I was thinking 'bout how everyone is dying/And maybe it's time.... to live/I don't know where we're going.../I don't know what we'll do...". The record ends with E repeating the line "And maybe it's time to live", as strings swoon around him and fade into the night. And excuse me. I have something in my eye.

This happens to me more with eels records than almost anyone else.

I didn't know there was a post-beck world... I've never thought of Beck as that influential on anything all that important in the music world... the alt-rock scene was still thriving well into 97 and then OK Computer hit and that changed everything. and I'm pretty sure he won't or ever was influential.

shit, it happened with me just reading that review.

this album by it self is a 9. within the context of the backstory the album is a 10

True story. Before I clicked on this thread I hesitated and thought, "forgo has probably said 'ugh' in there at least three times already." I was wrong.

Not easy to see Beck's influence these days, but how old were you in the mid-'90s? Beck was gigantic for a good four-year period there and there were plenty of people who got record deals or who were marketed as things like "the Canadian Beck". A whole slew of lo-fi "quirky" singer/songwriters and bands who mixed hip-hop with rock and folk (for better and for worse) appeared after Beck's success.

I was old enough, and never saw his influence, but by the mid 90's I was listening to Radiohead and Sunny Day Real Estate, and still never saw an influence from beck from any popular grunge/alt-rock bands. Calling something Post-something implies a long lasting influence. Beck didn't make it hard for any alt-rock band to break through and bands like stone temple pilots and the smashing pumpkins made much more of an impact.

"In my own small way I think I have something to contribute to the world. I've got enough letters, especially after the Electro-Shock Blues album, to believe that I have helped people. That's not why I do it, but it's a great bonus of the job." --E, 2003



After 1998's Electro-Shock Blues, it was time to let a little sunshine in. So E came home after touring and less than 6 months after the release of ESB, he had written & recorded Daisies of the Galaxy. This album, right down to its wonderful childrens' storybook artwork, is a welcome attempt to lighten up, so to speak. Now I've told you that ESB was E's masterpiece and we're just getting started, so it's probably all downhill from here, right? Not exactly. There have been points in the last 7 years where I proudly called DotG my favorite Eels album and have referred to this album as a masterpiece. It's easier to get in the mood to listen to, for one thing. And while it isn't as cohesive an album or 'statement' as ESB was, these 14 songs work really well together. This album is full of good songs. Nothing fancy, really. And don't let E fool you. He didn't put on any rose-colored goggles. The sunshine was being let in, but there was still plenty of shit wrong with the world. You just have to have a sense of humor about it. Hell, the record starts with a New Orleans funeral march, so don't get excited about E being over that whole 'death thing'.

Stylistically, this album doesn't cover as much ground as ESB does. "Jeannie's Diary" indulges E's inner Brian Wilson and is a more sophisticated version of the type of piano-pop songs he had written in the early-'90s. "Selective Memory" sounds a lot - a lot - like Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush", though the song doesn't really become great until he drops the falsetto and the strings (later sampled on Souljacker's "Fresh Feeling") enter the scene. This record is proof that E's a pretty damn good songwriter. This album has many acoustic strum-alongs, but E fills even the simplest songs here with LEGENDARY MELODIES™. The most 'legendary' of them are probably the deceptively poppy single "Mr. E's Beautiful Blues", the hidden track included at the record company's request (and included in the film Road Trip because E was "sort of forced into it at gunpoint by the record company"). And "It's a Motherfucker", a devastating break-up song that the 2000 Bush campaign singled out as an example of what was wrong with today's music industry. The Bush people noted the album artwork - clearly marketed to kids - and the cussing and tied E and Al Gore to that darn evil liberal Hollywood. I guess no one told Bush you could buy the album at Wal-Mart with the song "It's a Monster Trucker".

As sunshiney as this album might seem, E's cynical and uncertain view of the world remained (and remains). There are traces of it all over the record. Why is the donkey on the back of the album crying? There are references to the losses suffered in the ESB era. There are many lyrics devoted to doing mundane things (going to the movies to see T2, bird-watching, picking flowers) to help you get thru the day. And there are cynical jabs at the music industry ("I bought some rock star ashes from the back of Rolling Stone"). So continuing on ESB's themes, E admitted that life's pretty cool... but let's not kid ourselves. It can get pretty dark sometimes.

"The thing is.... when I was writing the song I wasn't thinking about perfume. I was thinking about my dead sister." - E, in response to an ad agency wanting to use "Last Stop: This Town".

always loved a review of this album that said 'this is either the most grownup childrens' album ever, or the most childish grownup album'

um, lily allen, kate nash, all those other white british kids. beck's still influential, just not especially popular.

Daisies may be the most underrated record of this decade. I'll stand by that forever.

daisies was the album that got me into "indie" music. i'll be thankful for it forever. changed my 13 year old world forever.

Wait can we go back to the fact that Beck wasn't the influential?

I'm still can't get over that statement.

dont listen to him. just roll with it.

cool thread. i've yet to hear really hear a note by these guys, although i somewhat remember the hit from beautiful freak back in '96 i guess.

definitely true. but sometimes you read something that makes you go, "the hell?"

oh well, anyway, Eels rule. Blinking Lights and other Revelations is my personal favorite.

I'm glad to see such love for Eels. I mean, I've been to a bunch of Eels shows and while I'm aware that the albums don't go platinum or anything, there are literally thousands of other people buying these albums so I know I'm not alone in thinking E's pretty awesome. It's strange, though. The albums tend to do well critically, but then you rarely seem to see them on year-end lists and there's no gushing praise. And they're barely a blip on even "indie" radio station's radars.

Just threw on Electro-Shock Blues for the first time in a while because of this thread. This was probably the first time I've ever listened to this record when I was in an unquestionably good mood. It still kicked my ass.

"They're gonna learn to fuck off and go buy some other album." - E, sarcastically responding to an interviewer from Holland asking if Souljacker will alienate old fans.



As evidenced by everyone currently trying to win people over to their side in the '08 Presidential race, change is a good thing. In 2000/1 (?), the beautiful Mr. E got married. He started writing more about characters and less about himself and the people in his life. And in September 2001, E said "I'm back" with an album cover that made him look like someone who would send letter bombs to the Pentagon. (American record stores would not receive the album until March 2002, along with the Rotten World Blues EP, which I'll get to later.) Souljacker is frequently referred to as the 'heaviest' or 'most rocking' Eels album and it is. But, it's not all just distorted riffs and scary Unabomber-rock. Some of the old E is there, but with the help of John Parish and Koool G Murder, it was time to do something new.

Songs like "Dog Faced Boy" and "Soul Jacker Part I" amp it up with riffs worthy of an action movie trailer. Hello, Edgar Wright. But you also get the baroque-Eels-pop of "Fresh Feeling" (borrowing the lovely strings from ol' "Selective Memory", remember?). When Souljacker finally arrived in American stores in 2002, I had just recently fallen in love with a girl. I have vivid memories of standing at a Borders listening station, excited to hear the new Eels album. And when "Fresh Feeling" came on ("my heart is reelin'/this is that fresh, that fresh feeling"), you could have lit up three ballrooms with my eyes and smile. That naive love for the girl didn't last, but love for "Fresh Feeling" hasn't faded at all. This is E's great gift. Underneath layers of darkness, ugliness and uncomfortable truths - he's always creating songs that make you happy to be alive. In some ways, Souljacker recalls Electro-Shock Blues in its stylistic refusal to stay standing in one place. "What Is This Note" begins with a speak'n' spell, morphs into something that Jay Reatard would be proud of and then turns into some really nice acoustic guitar-and-piano indie-pop-lovin'. In the words of Moe Syzlak, it's uh, awesomely outrageous. "Souljacker Part II" is E alone at a Mellotron warning that you can fill him up full of bullet holes, but you can't take his soul. "Woman Driving, Man Sleeping" is a great late-night strummer. Then there's the pop-pastiche-type stuff that's earned E the Beck comparisons over the years. More hit-and-miss than the previous two albums, it might seem like Souljacker is a bit of a comedown. But considering that this album rocks harder than most of the garage-rock and mall-rock that was being peddled at the time and that it features some more excellent contributions to the Eels catalogue, it's hard to call it a letdown.

4.9, Pitchfork?! Fuck off and go buy some other album.

I'll try and upload some live covers eels have done when I get a chance.

Yeah... I wanna reiterate that despite the darkness on the record, you don't have to be in a down mood to relate to it or enjoy it. Before writing the ESB review, I had been listening to it in my car for a few days and I marveled at how well it's held up. It still feels really fresh to me. I've never gotten sick of that record and I enjoy different things about it each time I put it on.

Not my link (I'm at work), but hopefully this works.

hxxp://rs123.rapidshare.com/files/57898772/Daisies_of_the_Galaxy.rar

souljacker is my least favorite eels album.
even though i really do like it. but its such a hard album for me to do end to end. i bought the edition with the 'rotton world blues' ep.

though very few songs can beat souljacker pt.2

just sayin.

What songs don't you like? It's nowhere near the previous two, obviously. For me - "SJ Part II" and "What is This Note" sort of save the second half, which is where it gets into skippable territory. The Town Hall version of "Bus Stop Boxer" beats SJ's version by two country miles.

its all the hard rockers 'busstop' 'souljacker1' 'jungle' great songs but for some reason can't listen to them a lot. and the 'ballad' or 'beautiful' songs are just a bit bellow par.

though in all honesty i do a whole lot of skipping on 'blinking'

i can only take so many 'themes'

"I’ve been on an Elvis kick for the last two years, and it definitely inspired our live show and the ghost of the King has been present." - E, 2003


Shootenanny! (2003)


This was really the first Eels album that was seen as a disappointment among many fans, yours truly included. Time has been a bit kinder to it over these last few years. It's certainly not terrible and you can even find people who claim this as their favorite Eels record. It's obvious why fans weren't as psyched about it, though. On a superficial level, there was no press angle or concept this time around. No 'album about the losses E suffered' or 'this is the Eels ROCK album!'. It was simply a collection of songs E had written. Another thing troubling fans at this time were E's interviews, which revealed his prolific bent. Shootenanny! was written and recorded rather quickly in E's basement, as a break from the 'masterpiece' (Blinking Lights and Other Revelations) he'd been working on since 1998 and other projects. 2003 was a busy time for the dude. He was working on several albums, writing songs for kids' movies (Holes, Shrek), scoring films (Levity) and there was that whole MC Honky thing. This all made it hard for some critics and fans to see Shootenanny! as anything but a tossed-off throwaway project. Nowadays, it's seen as a lesser effort but still appreciated and despite the pans, the album was actually generally well-received by critics (73 score at Metacritic).

That having been said - Shootenanny! is by far the most conventional and least experimental album in the catalogue. Musically and lyrically, it's pretty straightforward. This made folks like SPIN and Chris Dahlen angry; E was out of ideas and he was phoning it in. Ok ok, let's calm down! Part of the charm of this record is that it is straightforward and a more stripped-down rock'n'roll meat-and-potatoes version of the Eels isn't a bad thing. The ghosts of rock'n'roll were heavy on E's mind here and on the tour following this record's release, as shows featured covers of "Tiger Man", Sinatra's "That's Life", the Beatles' "I'm a Loser" and that joyful anthem, "Sixteen Tons". Stripped-down rock versions of beloved Eels classics like "My Beloved Monster" were sped up and altered. And the new songs seemed much more alive live and in living color. But back to the record.

"All In a Day's Work" works well as an opening salvo and the single "Saturday Morning" is straight outta the Infectious Pop/Rock 101 Playbook. It's like a grittier Matthew Sweet. "Dirty Girl" would end up being slowed down and made better on the '05 Eels with Strings tour. Listening to this album again recently, it did dawn on me how many of these songs I have not listened to since I don't know when. They're not bad, just kinda ... forgettable. I doubt there's anyone who would call "Agony" or "Wrong With Bobby" their fave Eels track. There are gems here. "Restraining Order Blues" is an underrated tune and "Numbered Days" chimes in, sounding like E's honest-to-God attempt to write a Coldplay single. And yeah, I mean that as a compliment. Like with most bands, the things you love about 'em never really go away. E's dark sense of humor ("They’ll hand awards out for best hair/And if we don’t win one, well, then/We’ll blow off our heads in despair"), heart-aching ("This nagging malaise is more than a phase/It feels like a job/But no boss ever pays you to lay there and think how you’ll die") and way with a melody were omnipresent. You can't hit them all out of the park, but there is something to be said for consistency. And besides, he did say something about a masterpiece he was still working on.

This is why I can't stand it. It sounds like he let Shrek get to his head and wrote an album of boring straight-ahead songs that were intended for shitty movie soundtracks.

All reviews have been OTM so far. You're putting my Fall thread to shame

"Agony" is one of my favorite Eels track.

yea so now i have been listening to eels for the last 5 hours. excellent.,

i really forgot how much 'fresh feeling' gets me.

dirty girl! come on Dirty girl!

my fav ablum. not too depressing and catchy as hell