Eels - End Times

Like Roy Orbison, one can imagine Mark E Everett standing or sitting motionless, hardly moving his mouth whilst singing. It just spills great waves of emotion and love and death, spinning tales of movement, and glories past and present. Listening to Everett is probably like shouting in despair into a cave and hearing all those terrified things you just couldn’t ever say before being rapidly volleyed right back at you via echo. Eels don’t usually make for comfortable listening. It has never been Everett’s goal to play and record what anyone else ‘wanted’ to hear or what the topical trend of the time is demanding of fickle musicians. He records for himself, his work is like a diary and instead of hiding it from his friends and family, he quickly, quietly, allows all of us to enter into what he has recorded….and then he’s gone again. 

Good bands usually rise and fall. Or sell out. Poor ones, like a tiny submarine surfacing, are a blip on the radar and then dipping away, are really nothing at all. But great bands, well they split to each end of a see-saw, constantly playing a balancing act. They ride a horizontal line of keeping the quality of material high but their celebrity low. They are always there, effortlessly churning out music. Sometimes they use a lot of effort. This album feels like a lot of effort. 

This album feels like exactly what it is; a maturing man nursing a horrendous break-up left to wallow in agony, going over and over thoughts of old-age and death and loneliness. In this cold stark light of day, Everett deals with his devils with delirious results. 

It begins with tinges of Springsteen at his morbid best. Everett opens with the gorgeous ‘In the Beginning’. It is soaked in fluttering, exhaustive memories. It’s sadness murmurs flatly like a slow heart. It’s an aching lead-in track but it’s not all set to stay like this. It peels off into ‘Gone Man’ which is much more rootin’ tootin’ upbeat stuff. The sweet and sour juxtaposition of these first two tracks is typical Eels. The high and lows epitomise the formula for much of their work. It works very well. The one man band feels like a ten man band. The production wraps warmly around him creating a very cosy atmosphere. This is tight concise music; the kind of stuff that the masses hate for some reason. No one likes intelligent music it seems. If they did Everett would be a good deal wealthier. 

Next up ‘In My Younger Days’ is okay. It's totally depressing as it deals with an old man looking back on his life but it is never just that simple and is due a listen if for nothing else, to bask in the teasing, taunting background strings that hover about the song like a million fire flies. Spooky, dramatic and wonderful writing. Bits and pieces of the tracks sound like Bon Iver but realistically, Eels have had this style for years so if anything Bon Iver has clearly been ripping Everett off. There are also snippets of Everett's old friend Elliot Smith dripping all over the mid section of the album; the graceful breaths, the bounding tempos, the feeling of placement within that dark recording studio. But there is a careful delicacy that carries throughout and stays afloat a top of everything else, touching each song with a special something. 

The album's title track sounds like a forgotten Dennis Wilson number. It’s like a portrait of Everett’s soul, the lyrical version of a painting perhaps. It certainly arouses enough emotion. How can it not? The tiny haunting, shimmering keys could shatter the heaviest heart. Absolutely magical. The mood lifts ever so slightly after ‘Paradise Blues’ and like all good albums, instead of petering out, upholds the overall feel and character of ‘End Times’ with stand-out numbers – ‘Nowadays,’ ‘Little Bird’ and ‘On My Feet.’ So…. 

…..what have we learnt? Well, frankly that relationships are painful. We knew that. But mostly we’ve learnt that after some fifteen years, Everett can still stand tall after producing yet another astonishing album. Hard to listen to at times yes, particularly for any casual listener, End Times is an ultimately hugely rewarding album for anyone mature enough to take a teeny calculated risk with their music and avoid Lady Gaga on the radio for an hour. Pop music is dead. It's all about emotional honesty. Sorry kids.