As critically acclaimed and undisputably talented as some artists are, most people just don’t remember their names. That name is almost always ditched in favor of “that (insert project here) guy” and eventually just gets abbreviated to “that guy” and “you know the guy.”
Even after Eels frontman Mark Oliver Everett made it easier for everyone, telling his audience to just call him “E,” the music-listening community seems to have all but forgotten a project that continues to contribute to the evolution of popular music.
Try this history on for size: Mark grew up in Virginia. His father was a world-renowned physicist — Dr. Hugh Everett is the man who conceptualized the existence of parallel universes. Hugh traded letters with Albert Einstein regularly — as a teenager.
Mark’s mother is described simply as “a troubled poet and author” by the band.
If one can imagine for a second what growing up in the aforementioned household would be like, it adds immeasurably to the interest value of the subject matter. After following in his “troubled” mother’s footsteps instead of his “prestigious” father’s, young Mark moved to Los Angeles, adopted his childhood nickname, “E,” and began furiously producing demos.
E landed a quick single with “Hello Cruel World” off his Polydor solo album A Man Called E in 1991, and while E produced another solo effort, he decided to scrap the old name and recruit supporting musicians with whom he could tour.
Thus, the Eels were born, while E retained full creative control. The band’s first single, the somewhat-inescapable “Novocaine for the Soul,” is both a good and bad representation of the band’s work on its excellent album, Beautiful Freak. While most songs share the heavily sampled sound and painstaking construction of the song, they also share its deceptive structure.
E is the last man to say that he’s depressing; his music says more cryptic things. Nearly every track presents a lush soundscape, beautifully lyric in form and initially frightening in content. The deception is in the subject matter; songs that are construed by many as childish whining and self-deprication hide blinding silver linings.
E is an expert on the subject of hope — a concept that evolves and clarifies as the Eels continue to produce albums.
The best example is the Eels’ second, and best, album: the appropriately titled Electro-Shock Blues.
Rolling Stone raved about the album yet made admissions of guilt after humming along to tunes with names like “Medication’s Wearing Off,” “My Descent Into Madness” and “Going to Your Funeral” (which appears on two tracks as “pt.1” and “pt.2”). The magazine’s mistake was to assume that E took the cliché way out of these songs.
Electro Shock Blues is an excellent album to play as a way to introduce the band to new listeners. The group’s talent is very quickly discovered, whether listeners focus on the lyrics or the music. If they tap their feet, they’re the latter; if they gasp and say, “Oh my God!” they’re likely the former.
The trick is in the incongruity. What happens when you deliver lyrics like those found in “Elizabeth on the Bathroom Floor” (“Lying on the bathroom floor / kitty licks my face once more / and I could try / but waking up is harder when you want to die”) and then grin?
Electro-Shock Blues is a meditation on what happiness is and whether it is possible to achieve it despite seemingly insurmountable hardships, a path that E has tread many times. Electro-Shock Blues was written after E had attended the funeral for his sister Elizabeth, who committed suicide, after his mother had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and after, at the tender age of 19, he found his own father dead.
With that in mind, the track listing takes on a different gist. No longer a trite tale but now a true story, anthems like “Cancer For the Cure” take on new connotations, as E belts out “Old Blue Eyes is back again / but he was never there in the first place / a heart attack may be something to fear / until you look out back.”
E’s lyrical brilliance has to be heard in order to be truly appreciated. Evocative down to the syllable, most of the poetry on the disc can be appreciated on the page as well as in the mix.
The dreamy “Medication’s Wearing Off” waxes, “See this watch you gave me / well it still ticks away / the days I’m claiming back from you / The medication’s wearing off / gonna hurt not a little, a lot / keep on tickin’ you’re not lickin’ me.”
Hope is the subject; things will get better. In the parting track, the sardonically titled “PS You Rock My World,” E makes this clear, saying, “Laying in bed tonight I was thinking / and listening to all the dogs / and the sirens and the shots / and how a careful man tries to dodge the bullets / while a happy man takes a walk / and maybe it’s time to live.”
And while the dark-come-light subject matter is the star of the album, few diamonds are admired less when set in gold. The songs’ melodies bring E’s message to life, and he shows an innate talent for crafting artful sounds. Every track features samples culled together from discrete sources, chosen solely for their value to the song’s melody rather than any social commentary, and can be listened to and appreciated without taking dark days into account.
Perhaps this serves as a reminder that when we stop paying attention to the details, life itself is basically a good thing.
As a parting comment, should you seek this album out in your local used-record store or the unexplored corners of the vast Internet, try listening without projecting a shred of irony or sarcasm into E’s vocals. Listen to it with a smile, and remember that this is a true story — one that the narrator has personally told you ends well.
The Eels have released four albums to date, including 2002’s Souljacker. Tracks, information, and every video the band has ever recorded are available on its website, www.eelstheband.com.
