Eels: End Times
Eels: End Times
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By inthenews. |  |
Friday, 15, Jan 2010 11:57
Vagrant Records, out January 18th.
What's it all about?
The Eels eighth studio album, following on a mere six months from their last, Hombre Lobo. Recorded in lead singer/songwriter E's basement on an antiquated four track tape machine, this is very much his 'break-up' album dealing with the end of an unspecified relationship.
Who's it by?
Eels first came to prominence in 1996 with the hit single Novocaine For The Soul and their debut album Beautiful Freak. The band is largely a vehicle for Mark Oliver Everett (aka E) who recently starred in the BBC documentary Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives (about his father) and is also author of the best-selling Things The Grandchildren Should Know.
As an example...
"I pushed the bed against the window today/So there'd only be one side/Well it's a little less lonely that way/But I'm still dying inside" - On My Feet
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
Eels have tended to be cherished more here in the UK than in their US homeland and once won the Brit Award for Best International Breakthrough Act. Such a heartbroken record will instantly daw comparisons to other classic 'break-up' albums but E himself predicts that the stripped-back End Times may be divisive: "This will be some people's favourite Eels album and some people's least favourite Eels album. I'm prepared for that."
What the others say
"Everett is talking directly and honestly of the unutterable, gut-wrenching loneliness of loving and losing. " - Drowned In Sound
"As startlingly direct and melodically assured as ever." - BBC 6 Music website
So is it any good?
End Times is written and performed by a man who seems to know his classic 'break-up' albums inside out - and that is one of its chief problems. Far too often you cannot escape the nagging feeling that E is trying too hard to ape the likes of Blood On The Tracks, Tunnel Of Love or even Beck's Sea Change.
It feels like someone deliberately attempting to craft his seminal introspective classic with bits of other people's work. Nowadays opens with a completely superfluous Dylanesque harmonica solo and Little Bird's lyrical focus is stolen wholesale from Blood On The Tracks' You're A Big Girl Now. The final track on the album is even more blatant - an inferior, less tuneful re-write of Valentine's Day, the final track on Springsteen's break-up album, Tunnel Of Love - right down to the gently swirling organ part.
This self-conscious borrowing would be less of an issue if the album weren't far too often mired in its own self-pity. There is a fine line between melancholy and moroseness - a line that End Times crosses too frequently to remain enjoyable. It doesn't help that the four track recordings push everything very much up-front - there is no light and shade, no escaping the sulkiness of songs like In My Younger Days and I Need A Mother.
This is a shame because there are beautifully delicate melodies here - the simple piano ballad A Line In The Dirt, the archetypal Eels anti-anthem Nowadays and the title track amongst them. There are also truly affecting moments of emotional honesty - often when the songwriting is at its simplest and least self-conscious - but these risk being subsumed by the more studied and moany aspects of the album as a whole.
6/10
Steve Braund