Eels – End Times
by Matthew James on January 19th, 2010
Eels – End Times
January 19th, 2010
Vagrant Records/E Works
Score: 8.0
There is an old adage that suggests that in life, you have to take the rough with the smooth, that your time will be filled with highs and lows or to fully enjoy the good, you have to experience the bad. As life stories go, Mark Everett (better known as simply E) has certainly felt life’s extremes. His life story is a fascinating one told so honestly and eloquently in his autobiography ‘Things The Grandchildren Should Know’ and poured into his often soul-baring musical output. While E’s songs can often be found behind a wall of great depression, there is always something triumphant and prevailing that comes to the fore. End Times, Eels’ eighth album, doesn’t veer too much from the band’s past but is yet another moving and inspired record.
Having gone into depth of such personal tragedies as his parents’ death and sister’s suicide on previous records, you know E is not going to hold back on what’s been happening in his life. End Times deals mainly with the subject of his divorce and place in the world as he moves towards a half century of years of survival. The recording and production is not as elaborate as that on efforts such as Blinking Lights And Other Revelations or Souljacker. Many of these songs consist of just E and either a guitar or piano. He is joined by a full band on occasion but this is a very personal, warm album recorded mainly by just one man, alone.
‘In My Younger Days’ finds E thinking of the past and how events have shaped him into the man he is now. His trademark gruff voice is backed with a somber, echoing church-like organ and picked distortion-free electric guitar. Looking to the future and his loneliness, he declares: “But I’ve had enough/been through some stuff/And I don’t need any more misery to teach me what I should be/I just need you back.” On ‘A Line In The Dirt’, we are told the story of the aftermath of an argument with a loved one. “She’s locked herself in the bathroom again/So I’m pissing in the yard” sings E, somehow able to bring a slight smile into a desperate situation. The song itself is an Eels classic in the same vein as ‘Climbing To The Moon’ from Electro-Shock Blues. Piano and gorgeous horns provide another moment where Eels are able to make inconsolable feelings sound quite wonderful.
A couple of rockier numbers arrive on ‘Gone Man’, a shuffling kind of early 60s Mersey Beat tune, and appropriately bluesy ‘Paradise Blues’ where E mocks the mindset of a suicide bomber (E’s cousin was an air steward on the plane that was flown into the Pentagon on September 11th). The themes of regret and wishing for a change in fortune continue on ‘Nowadays’. Another strummed ballad with some subtle touches of horns and slide guitar, “Trouble is a friend of mine I’d like to leave behind” sings E before injecting more of his wry humour: ”I like my friends more refined.” E gets his Johnny Cash on with muffled album opener ‘The Beginning’ while he is in brutally honest mood on piano-led ‘I Need A Mother’ where he picks both his and his wife’s problems apart.
End Times is certainly one of the strongest albums of Eels’ career. It is unlikely they will ever reach the highs (or maybe lows is more appropriate) of 1998’s Electro-Shock Blues or match the ambitions of 2005’s Blinking Lights And Other Revelations but six months on from the slightly disappointing Hombre Lobo, this is a more than fascinating record. Perhaps as listeners we have become number to the openness of E’s lyrical content and so are no longer surprised or taken in by his pain, it’s just what we expect. In many ways, we want more tragedy where maybe this songwriter has given more that enough of himself to his public. As unique and intriguing as ever, End Times will be sure to please the loyal Eels following and add further resentment to the fact that a great deal still remember Eels only for their 1996 breakthrough single ‘Novacaine For The Soul’. A lot has happened to Mark Everett since then, a lot of it unfortunate, but he continues to find ways of expressing this misfortune into his music. “But you know I’m pretty sure/That I’ve been through worse” he sings on closing track ‘On My Feet’, “and I’m sure I can take the hit”. Eels’ next great album is just a personal tragedy away and Mark Everett wouldn’t have it any other way.
Matthew James
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