Eels, "End Times" 02/25/2010
By Doug Kaplan
✭✭✭
I am not an educated Eels fan. If you are someone who has been following Mark Everett since his solo efforts, roughly five years before I was born, then this review may seem rather unsophisticated and uninformed. However, if you happened to stumble upon Everett’s band name, or have even borrowed one of his albums from a friend, then we are in the same boat, and shoes as they say.
It was not until post high school graduation, in my efforts to find something to believe in, some life guidance and direction, that I discovered Everett’s long-term project, Blinking Lights & Other Revelations. At first I wasn’t blown away. For an album that had been reportedly recorded over an eight-year span, releasing entire albums in between, it seemed to lack any real agenda.
My best guess is that the album was half recorded while Everett was sailing on amphetamines. And the other half? A collaboration with the Blue-Man Group, while Everett played piano, triangle or whichever instrument he desired from his enormous one-man-band repertoire… while using his teeth. He lacked Elliott Smith’s reflectional self-pity and Jesse Lacey’s acoustic truths. I felt as if he had no light to show me. However, after listening to this album straight through fourteen times, according to my iTunes, I can say that I have changed my opinion. Make no mistake, that album is brilliant. But this review is not about that album.
While wasting time in a local record shop I came across Eels’ twelfth studio effort, entitled End Times. It appears that Everett has taken a less optimistic stance this time around. In classic style, the album begins with a fingerpicked acoustic track, "In the Beginning". Emoting an overwhelming loss of direction, the song speaks of how good things had once been.
The album continues on to talk about Everett’s youth with "In My Younger Days", and a crystallized theme is established. My favorite song can be heard five tracks in. On "A Line In The Dirt", Everett humorously expresses a familiar feeling with his opening lines She locked herself in a bathroom again/So I am pissing in the yard.
The title track doesn’t appear until mid-album. Singing of a man with a “crazy matted beard” (quite possibly the gas station-working Santa Clause figure appearing on the album’s cover), Everett vocalizes the character’s prophecy of how the end is near. But no one listens to the man except Everett himself who “can hear him loud and clear.” The message of the album is undeniable from this point on.
The next ‘song’, for lack of a better word, is "Apple Trees". It is a monologue over a simple guitar riff, in which Everett discusses his discovery of a street with thousands of apple trees during a road trip. He compares himself to one tree among all the others. The one tree does not particularly stand out, and Everett expresses that’s how he too felt. How’s that for direct ideology?
The rest of the album plays out much like the beginning. It concludes with a jingle called "Little Bird". This song sounds like a letter to God asking for a repaired heart. On an album whose candle of hope constantly dims and dwindles, this final track leaves its listeners with an intangible grasp that they might be saved after all.
The iTunes deluxe edition comes with a few bonus songs, which are surprisingly nothing like Everett’s other B-sides. One in particular, "Some Friend, shines through, and is up to par with the rest of the album. "Some Friend" is a tune that probably should have made the final cut had it not been for conflict in major themes with the rest of the tracks.
End Times is a combination of obscure sounds and beautifully orchestrated piano/guitar works, which fuse together to form Eels’ distinctive qualities, yet perfect ability to define the Indie/Folk genre. Overall, the album is an easy listen with pretty melodies and catchy refrains. It fits nicely into Eels’ decade-long catalog, and is a must hear for fans of the band or genre.
1. In The Beginning
2. Gone Man
3. In My Younger Days
4. Mansions of Los Feliz
5. A Line In The Dirt
6. End Times
7. Apple Trees
8. Paradise Blues
9. Nowadays
10. Unhinged
11. High and Lonesome
12. I Need A Mother
13. Little Bird
14. On My Feet
✭✭✭
I am not an educated Eels fan. If you are someone who has been following Mark Everett since his solo efforts, roughly five years before I was born, then this review may seem rather unsophisticated and uninformed. However, if you happened to stumble upon Everett’s band name, or have even borrowed one of his albums from a friend, then we are in the same boat, and shoes as they say.
It was not until post high school graduation, in my efforts to find something to believe in, some life guidance and direction, that I discovered Everett’s long-term project, Blinking Lights & Other Revelations. At first I wasn’t blown away. For an album that had been reportedly recorded over an eight-year span, releasing entire albums in between, it seemed to lack any real agenda.
My best guess is that the album was half recorded while Everett was sailing on amphetamines. And the other half? A collaboration with the Blue-Man Group, while Everett played piano, triangle or whichever instrument he desired from his enormous one-man-band repertoire… while using his teeth. He lacked Elliott Smith’s reflectional self-pity and Jesse Lacey’s acoustic truths. I felt as if he had no light to show me. However, after listening to this album straight through fourteen times, according to my iTunes, I can say that I have changed my opinion. Make no mistake, that album is brilliant. But this review is not about that album.
While wasting time in a local record shop I came across Eels’ twelfth studio effort, entitled End Times. It appears that Everett has taken a less optimistic stance this time around. In classic style, the album begins with a fingerpicked acoustic track, "In the Beginning". Emoting an overwhelming loss of direction, the song speaks of how good things had once been.
The album continues on to talk about Everett’s youth with "In My Younger Days", and a crystallized theme is established. My favorite song can be heard five tracks in. On "A Line In The Dirt", Everett humorously expresses a familiar feeling with his opening lines She locked herself in a bathroom again/So I am pissing in the yard.
The title track doesn’t appear until mid-album. Singing of a man with a “crazy matted beard” (quite possibly the gas station-working Santa Clause figure appearing on the album’s cover), Everett vocalizes the character’s prophecy of how the end is near. But no one listens to the man except Everett himself who “can hear him loud and clear.” The message of the album is undeniable from this point on.
The next ‘song’, for lack of a better word, is "Apple Trees". It is a monologue over a simple guitar riff, in which Everett discusses his discovery of a street with thousands of apple trees during a road trip. He compares himself to one tree among all the others. The one tree does not particularly stand out, and Everett expresses that’s how he too felt. How’s that for direct ideology?
The rest of the album plays out much like the beginning. It concludes with a jingle called "Little Bird". This song sounds like a letter to God asking for a repaired heart. On an album whose candle of hope constantly dims and dwindles, this final track leaves its listeners with an intangible grasp that they might be saved after all.
The iTunes deluxe edition comes with a few bonus songs, which are surprisingly nothing like Everett’s other B-sides. One in particular, "Some Friend, shines through, and is up to par with the rest of the album. "Some Friend" is a tune that probably should have made the final cut had it not been for conflict in major themes with the rest of the tracks.
End Times is a combination of obscure sounds and beautifully orchestrated piano/guitar works, which fuse together to form Eels’ distinctive qualities, yet perfect ability to define the Indie/Folk genre. Overall, the album is an easy listen with pretty melodies and catchy refrains. It fits nicely into Eels’ decade-long catalog, and is a must hear for fans of the band or genre.
1. In The Beginning
2. Gone Man
3. In My Younger Days
4. Mansions of Los Feliz
5. A Line In The Dirt
6. End Times
7. Apple Trees
8. Paradise Blues
9. Nowadays
10. Unhinged
11. High and Lonesome
12. I Need A Mother
13. Little Bird
14. On My Feet
