Your earliest memory, from the cot dreams

toys hoofing in a ring of light, to the tune

it’s a small world, after all that is poetry in itself

apropos of such unfolding, in nonage, in infancy

marriage at twenty-five, offspring by thirty

was never yours, nor office administration

not even the longest term mortgage, to settle you

into the long haul, the long yards,

the back yards, and cats and dogs

none of them yours. It was written in a villanelle

it was ordained by Auden, it killed your chances

you slid by the cornfields, under Van Gough’s sill

you fell into a lustful fate, a pond of muddy water

you swam with the eels, your electric adult

on the blink, powering down and dreamless.

No matter what, I’m always near…”

Half moon smiling…

Mist hangs in the air…

You look so beguiling…

I noticed you changed your hair…

Have to keep my distance…

We have to stop the flirt…

Appreciation of the persistence…

Won’t protect from hurt…

Por: Mome

A penas estabamos disfrutando de la música de E con su disco Hombre Lobo, cuando nos llega una nueva noticia… ya hay un nuevo disco, y se llama End Times.

Este nuevo disco saldrá el 19 de enero del 2010, y por ahora puedes darte una probadita, bajando el primer sencillo Little Bird, del cual te dejamos el video:

Al parecer E sigue por el mismo camino que sus discos pasados, con sus canciones meláncolicas, bonitos sonidos de guitarras y su típico humor negro. Simplemente… nos encanta!

Over the weeks here in England, I have observed a vast array of comestibles indigenous to this British population. Some I have consumed with great pleasure, while others I have gone to great lengths to avoid, like an eight-day-old boy who has caught sight of a rabbi. This short blog is dedicated to the latter category of sustenance. Below, I have constructed a list of Andrew-rebuked food items, the rejection of which should be self-evident. I anticipate that this list will expand as the years pass. Here they are in top-10 format:

10. Pulses (it turns out these are beans, or something, but the terminology reminds me of a beating heart)

9. Salad cream (this mayonnaise-based salad topping doesn’t even require refrigeration… or at least none of the restaurants we’ve been to bother)

8. Tuna mayonnaise and sweetcorn sandwich

7-5. “Gü” (pronounced “goo”) brand “pud” varieties, including: “chocolate puds,” “mini puds,” and, my favorite, “saucy puds”

4. Jellied eels

3. Canned goose fat

2. Prawn mayonnaise pita (exactly like it sounds)

And last but not least, everyone’s favorite beverage:

1. Cockburns Assured (who knew that drinking could be so dangerous)

If you’d like to see me stumble through Latin, take a look at this video of 1 Thessalonians:

(I also contribute to Deuteronomy, Lamentations, and Jonah)

Photos of Killaloe in flood are now up. They were taken on the morning of 22 November 2009.

Welcome once again to a recap of our weekly finds from around the internet.

As always, we begin our journey by fortifying ourselves with a piece of cheesecake.  This week, at Chris’ request, that cheesecake is Padma Lakshmi, the host of Top Chef on The Food Network.  I have to be honest and say I’m curious to see what kind of traffic the combination of cheesecake and Padma Lakshmi drives.

Padma’s geek credentials are strong.  Besides her work on The Food Network, she has been a runway model, the love interest in an EELS music video, Sean Bean’s nemesis in Sharpe’s Challenge and, perhaps most importantly, an alien princess on Star Trek:  Enterprise.

It’s good to be Scott Bakula.

Oh, and she was married to Salman Rushdie.

On with the links.

1. Chicago Tribune columnist literally eats his words re:  Bulls C Joakim Noah.
2. Between Two Ferns with Zack Galifanakis, the best talk show EVER schools Conan.
3. The 100 Greatest Quotes from The Wire.
4. Newsweek presents the decade in 7 seconds.
5. Smart guys fight over football; Malcom Gladwell puts the hurt on a reviewer over QBs and draft status.
6. A trailer for a movie where Manny Pacquiauo fights a giant crab.
7. College football play of the year from Bethel College in Kansas.
8. Commonsense?  Conservatism?  Verbal tic?
9. Microsoft blows a software rollout?  No way!
10. Stephe’s a Trekkie…ummm…Trekker.
11. E*Trade baby outtakes.  Funnier than you think.
12. Calibrate.
13. Bacon Envelopes.  Thank you science.
14. Humorous bailout rant.
15. Existentialism.
16. Interview with Lemmy.  \m/
17. Robot band.
18. Rescuing the horns for metal.  See above.
19. That’s both gross and wrong.  More wrong, but still gross.
20. More cryptozoology.
21. Our obligatory Twilight link of the week.
22. And I’ve read two.
23. And I drafted two.
24. I’m pretty sure the word you’re looking for is treason.
25. Disturbing XBox 360 story #1.
26. Disturbing XBox 360 story #2.
27. NO!  REALLY!
28. And, finally, Jon Stewart once again delivers the truth.  This time about Nancy Grace.

Eels – Electro-Shock Blues (1998)

Why it’s taken me so long to get round to Eels is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it’s the fact that there is so much choice. ‘Daisies of the Universe’ for example soundtracked a whole summer back at the turn of the decade while ‘Blinking Lights And Other Revelations’ continues to give up it’s secrets four years after it’s release. ‘Beautiful Freak’ too is a wonderful album – check out ‘Novocaine for the Soul’ or ‘Susan’s House’. However after a period of suitably dark introspection aided by the sudden appearance of ‘Baby Genius’ on the Squeezebox random playlist, I can’t ignore ‘Electro-Shock Blues’ claim for inclusion a moment longer. Created after a year of personal tragedy, the subject matter, mental illness, is sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes harrowing, but there is a tenderness about Mark E’s writing and delivery that promises redemption and better times ahead. Look no further than ‘PS you Rock My World’ for proof. In the meantime, here’s a video to enjoy…

Eels have been eaten, studied and sometimes vilified by authors and boys telling tall tales by torchlight for years. Despite the fascination that many people, including Aristotle, have had with them over the centuries, very little is actually known about freshwater eels.

What we do know is that there are more than 700 species of true eels in the order of Anguilliformes, have been identified worldwide, including 14 families of exclusively marine eels (including congers and morays) and one family of freshwater eels the Anguillidae, which consists of 16 species in the genus Anguilla.

The American eel (A. rostrata), European eel (A. anguilla), Japanese eel (A. japonica), and Australian or shortfin eel (A. australis) have been on the menu for thousands of years, as evidenced by eel bones found in European middens in France and Spain and Greece. It’s also known that both Native American Indians and Australian Aborigines also ate eels regularly.

However they are still a regular dish in many restaurants, and even positioned as a delicacy in some countries. The goal of successfully breeding eels commercially has remained somewhat elusive for a variety of reasons, meaning that most of what does end up on dinner plates is wild, and populations are declining as a result.

But what I find most fascinating about eels from the Anguillidae family is that they are catadromous; they are born and die in salt water, but mainly pass their lives in fresh water, which is a life cycle completely the opposite anadromous fishes such as salmon. Knowing that eels are often found thousands of miles from the sea, and they are known to travel extensively through estuaries and rivers.

The life cycle of eels was first documented in 1923, by a Danish researcher, Johannes Schmidt, who spent eighteen years trawling for eel larvae in the Atlantic Ocean. But what is still puzzling scientists is how to successfully and commercially breed eels for commercial purposes, which if the species are to survive, must be developed before the wild eels start to die out in some countries. There is already a drastically reduced population of eels in both the USA and Japan.

You’ll find an interesting and extensive article by eel specialist Richard Sweid, about eel research in the past and currently what is behind the race to understand more about their breeding habits.

You can read it at  http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/features/291856/slippery-business?page=3

Time for Dinner!

From the upcoming Eels’ release of ‘End Times‘ out 1/19/2010

First single and now video, “Little Bird”

myspace

Yes, it is up for argument, of course. But I know what i hate, and for these albums, there was nothing to hate on, save a stray throw-away track here or there. That’s pretty much how I determined which albums to include and which to leave off: did the WHOLE product deliver? I didn’t limit myself to numbers, as in only 2 for each year, but instead just went with albums I could not leave off unless some Strokes hater held a gun to my head. It’s complete coincidence that I ended up with the nice, sort-of-round number of 25.

This list is not exhaustive, I’m sure people will mention a few that I’ll kick myself for forgetting while I was making this. Others will mention albums I wish I could forget, such as anything by TV On the Radio, a band that I cannot for the life of me understand why it is so well-regarded. One last heads up: don’t bother offering any Dave Matthews or John Mayer suggestions. They have, at best, 3 or 4 good songs between them, definitely not enough for placement on such hallowed ground.

2000:

sunny day real estate—the rising tide

This album is full of jangly guitars and soaring vocals bellowing beautiful lyrics–it always makes me remember the ocean and the beginning of my marriage. All good memories. 

Fave tracks: One, Tearing in My Heart

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coldplay—parachutes

Damn, gotta say, when this came out it seemed like Chris Martin and company actually had a chance of giving Radiohead a run for the money in the art-rock circuit (that is a circuit, right?). But then all their albums sounded exactly the same. Not saying they didn’t have good songs on other albums, but come on: most of it sounds exactly the same–for example, one single song on Viva la Vida, their latest, has been the subject of upwards of 5 different plagiarism lawsuits by artists ranging from Cat Stevens to Steve Vai. Regardless, Parachutes was a beauty when it came out, and when you factor in the sweet memories that go along with it for me, it’s only gold.

Fave Tracks: Trouble, We Never Change

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ghostface killah—supreme clientele

It could be argued that this album signaled the death knell of what many hip hop purists (such as yours truly) consider to be “true” hip hop. Yes, we are elitist bastards.  But without getting into arguments about the greatness (or lack of greatness) of Lil Wayne and Chamillionaire, anyone can at least appreciate the cementing of Ghostface’s status as the best rapper to emerge from Wutang Clan. I mean, have you heard Iron Man? And then he follows up with this a few years later. BEASTLY! Listen up. This was as good as it was going to get for many, many years (one could argue).

Fave Tracks: Buck 50, Wu Banga 101

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2001:

radiohead—amnesiac

The first of two Radiohead albums on this list, Amnesiac constantly ended up in my regular rotation during the glorious “Aughts.” It is possibly one of the most accessible ‘Head albums, surpassed perhaps by only 2008’s In Rainbows in terms of listenability.

Fave tracks: Pyramid Song, Knives Out

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white stripes—white blood cells

I remember exactly where I was when I first heard this introduction to The White Stripes, and how many albums can you say that about? It blew my freaking mind. Jack White entered the realm of genius for me with his fusion of old blues and modern rock. There is still no better stimulant on the market for getting a day started off than this banger.

Fave Tracks: Hotel Yorba, The Union Forever

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the strokes—is this it?

Here we have the controversial British version of the cover for this first Strokes album, which was of course not available in the more prudish U.S. But with or without that art, it was still a revelation, and came out the gate with more buzz than a thousand beehives. Backlash followed, of course, but regardless of whether Julian Casablancas can actually sing or that his voice was doctored with various studio trappings to make him sound better (a charge I don’t buy after hearing their later efforts), this album along with White Blood Cells is a killer on every level.

Fave Tracks: Someday, Hard To Explain

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bjork—vespertine

There are some incredibly beautiful tracks on this album. Bjork is from another planet. Her voice itself is poetry. I love her.

Fave Tracks: Hidden Place, Pagan Poetry

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2002:                                                                

neko case—blacklisted

The first of three albums by Neko Case, this album showcases her voice in a way that makes the term alt-country not sound completely stupid. For whatever reason, I am reminded of the Michael Scott quote in the TV show “The Office,” when he says, “ You don’t call retarded people retards. It’s bad taste. You call your friends retards when they’re acting retarded.”

Fave Tracks: Tightly, Pretty Girls

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the flaming lips—yoshimi battles the pink robots

From crazed punk beginnings to the masterpiece that was ’99’s The Soft Bulletin, this follow-up to that revelation of Wayne Coyne’s song-writing ability was a true window into this incredibly sensitive soul. And after meeting him in person (and basically forcing him to take a copy of my book), I can say that he is about as genuine a rock star who also happens to be a real person as any rock star has ever been. If that makes any sense.

Fave Tracks: Ego Trippin’ At the Gates of Hell, Do You Realize??

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beck—sea change

I first heard this Beck album while “working” as a DJ at UNC Greensboro’s 10 watt student-run radio station. It’s the first full-length Beck album that I know of that has him actually writing lyrics some sense can be made of—a real (wait for it…) sea change in his style. It is also heartbreaking, about his breakup from some model, I hear.

Fave Tracks: Little One, Lost Cause

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2003:

yeah yeah yeahs—fever to tell

This 3-piece, Karen O-fronted band is garage rock at its finest as far as I’m concerned. She’s so weird and rock-starry. I’d be afraid of her in real life. Which is just how she likes it, I’m sure. Just listen how she whispers “I’m rich, rich, rich rich rich. I’ll take you out boy.” F-ing hardcore, regardless of the tear sliding down her cheek in the “Maps” video.

Fave Tracks: Rich, Y Control

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death cab for cutie—transatlanticism

For me Ben Gibbard is sort of the poor man’s Thom Yorke, and a total bastard (he married my imaginary girlfriend, Zooey Deschanel). But with this album and his other project, The Postal Service, he pretty much cemented his place in the starry night of my soul or whatever. He writes some catchy shit. But I think an Amazon reviewer said it best: “If you’re an overblown emokid with a yen for the melodramatic, you should buy this CD. You may now stop reading.”

Fave Tracks: Lightness, Passenger Seat

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2004:

air—talkie walkie

This album is on here because I like it more OVERALL than their previous Aughts effort, 10,000 hz Legend. But to be fair, there are a couple of songs on that generally disliked album that are some of my favorite Air tracks, such as “How Does It Make You Feel” and “Vagabond.” But this record is definitely more cohesive and sets a great mood for being drunk/high/tired, so we’re going with this one. And for the record, it is WAY beter than 2007’s Pocket Symphony.

Fave Tracks: Run, Another Day

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danger mouse—the grey album

While this is not officially an album you can buy, since Danger Mouse never got the rights to any of the Beatles or Jay-Z tracks he used to make this groundbreaking album (which, for anyone living in a musical cave for the past ten years, is a mash-up of The Beatles’ “White Album” and Jay-Z’s “Black Album”), I would be remiss not to include it on this list. For better or worse, DM started the massive wave of mash-ups with this effort, and also got himself a pretty good paying gig as half of Gnarls Barkley. Plus, this shit just kicks. Whoda thunk it?

Fave Tracks: Encore, 99 Problems

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2005:

my morning jacket—z

I believe that, along with Death Cab, Dashboard Confessional, Bright Eyes and My Chemical Romance, My Morning Jacket helped create and nurture the wimpy mid-Aughts  juggernaut that was known as Emo. But unlike Dashboard and Bright Eyes, they don’t totally suck. This is one of my favorite albums of all time. So, cheer up, Emo kid.  

Fave Tracks: It Beats 4 U, Knot Comes Loose

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eels—blinking lights and other revelations

Mark Everett is the frontman of EELS (or eels), and is probably, when I really consider it, the person I most relate to as far as “getting” exactly what he is talking about with the majority of his songs. This double album has songs on it that I absolutely hate (such as the co-penned with one of the guys from R.E.M. “Hey Man”), but since there are over 20 songs on offer here, there is definitely at least a full album’s worth of incredible compositions. My favorite memory associated with this record is painting my daughter’s bedroom in preparation for us to move into our first owned home. Tears me up just thinking about it.

Fave Tracks: In the Yard Behind the Church, I’m Going To Stop Pretending That I Didn’t Break Your Heart

_________________________________________________

2006:

neko case—fox confessor brings the flood

Second Neko album on the list, and arguably her best ever. Her voice reminds me so much of Patsy Cline’s. She is a true artist, with seemingly little care about her “image” as far as whether or not she fits into the sterotypical chanteuse mold. She’s all about the voice. Example: her album “Blacklisted” was supposedly named that because while performing at Nasvhille’s famous Grand Ole Opry, she took off her shirt (I never heard if she was completely topless or just offended the genteel southern sensibility with her bra alone) and was banned for life. Totally punk, and what puts the “alt” in her country stylings, I can only suppose.

Fave Tracks: Star Witness, Dirty Knife

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decemberists—the crane wife

Along the Flaming Lips album that follows, this was the last album that my wife and I shared. Every time I hear the 3-part Crane Wife song the album is named after, it destroys me. In a good way. I’ll leave it there. Don’t want to make a complete fool out of myself, after all. Not drunk enough for that anyway. Give me a few hours. Perhaps that dragon will rear its head in the comments.

_________________________________________________

beck—the information

This album is the epitome of cool. And one of about 45 albums that Beck released in the Aughts. I’m still not sure if I’m being impartial enough regarding choosing this album over, say, Guero or Modern Guilt, but whatever. These year/decade-end lists are always subjective and come down to much more about what effected the listener personally more than something like whether the songs held complexity in their structures. This album came with a DVD of every song being lip-synched by Beck and his friends, and I would often put it in the DVD player and hit repeat on it over and over again. It was like having a bunch of tripping acid-freaks to keep me company through surely some of the strangest times in a lifetime of strange times.

Fave Tracks: Cellphone’s Dead, No Complaints

______________________________________________

the flaming lips—at war with the mystics

They played a free show in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park on May 21, 2006 in support of this album. It was amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoIohWnbVSk

Fave Tracks: My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion/ Vein of Stars

__________________________________________________

2007:

radiohead—in rainbows

As I said earlier in this post, this is probably the most easily listened to Radiohead album (which is most likely why it won or was nominated for more Grammys than any other from their amazing catalog, most notably OK Computer, which is (not so) arguably one of the greatest albums ever recorded). But this one is definitely right up there, and if nothing else serves to cement Radiohead’s place among the greatest bands to ever record together.Plus, they gave it away for free on the internet, and that’s totally kickass.

Fave Tracks: Nude, All I Need

______________________________________________

amy winehouse—back to black

Fuck this album. I can’t even remember why I have it on here, and it was easier to write this sentence than to screw up the formatting on this post by erasing it.

_________________________________________________

2008:

MGMT—oracular spectacular

When I finally got up to NYC to meet my agent and publishing house handlers in January of this year, MGMT was still all the rage, and I therefore felt much less of a cultural disconnect than I had originally feared, ’cause I’d been on this bandwagon for a long time, based mainly on the fact that two hippie guys made up the band and had lyrics like, “I’ll move to Paris, shoot some heroin and fuck with the stars/ You’ll man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars,” which totally runs contrary to their hippie guy image. Plus many of the songs on here an infinitely hummable, as my 9 yr. old daughter will happily testify.

Fave Tracks: Time To Pretend, Kids

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fleet foxes—fleet foxes

I first heard Fleet Foxes when they appeared on SNL in January. They are from Seattle (how cliche…1991 called, it wants its premiere underground music scene back), but sound like they are Straight Outta Appalachia. Which is kind of disturbing to me, since this means that the two most well-known Appalachian-sounding artists are from the west coast (the other being Los Angeles’ Gillian Welch). But no matter. Listen to this record and know that what you are hearing is authentic bluegrass-tinged. Every time I hear it makes me yearn to go back to Kentucky, if Kentucky weren’t so littered with ignorant rednecks and memories of unbridled happiness that make everything now pale in comparison. And you just can’t live like that.

Fave Tracks: White Winter Hymnal, Blue Ridge Mountains

__________________________________________________

2009:

neko case—middle cyclone

I’ll be the first to admit that my exposure to much new music has been severely hampered this year, so it’s pretty anemic of me to only have one album listed for 2009, and to have the one album listed be by an artist that already has 2 other albums on this list. But this record is my favorite of Neko Case’s so far, and her insightful lyrics never cease to amaze me along with her incredible voice. Plus almost all the songs are about love (a first time for her), and the album ends with 28 minutes of frogs and crickets making night noises, which is a perfect way to fall asleep. So there’s that, too.

Fave Tracks: The Next Time You Say “Forever”, The Pharoahs 

ARTIST OF THE DECADE:

I decided on this designation based solely on who had the most presence on the list. Radiohead, Flaming Lips and Beck came close, with two albums each on here, but in the end it wasn’t enough. Thanksfully I didn’t have to think much on it, since only one artist had three albums on my list, and that was, of course,

NEKO CASE

She’s incredible. Have I mentioned that yet? Watch this video, buy her albums, thank me later.

1. “Elizabeth on the Bathroom Floor” – 2:08
2. “Going to Your Funeral Part I” – 2:37
3. “Cancer for the Cure” – 4:46
4. “My Descent into Madness” – 3:54
5. “3 Speed” – 2:45
6. “Hospital Food” – 3:23
7. “Electro-Shock Blues” – 2:29
8. “Efils’ God” – 3:19
9. “Going to Your Funeral Part II” – 1:30
10. “Last Stop: This Town” – 3:27
11. “Baby Genius” – 2:04
12. “Climbing to the Moon” – 3:38
13. “Ant Farm” – 2:11
14. “Dead of Winter” – 2:59
15. “The Medication Is Wearing Off” – 3:51
16. “P.S. You Rock My World” – 3:08

[RS] [MU]

J’étais pas vraiment motivé pour voir ce film. Je lui préférais The Informant. D’abord parce que je suis un fan de Soderbergh, mais aussi parce que les critiques du dernier Woody Allen n’étaient pas excellentes. Bien que, en général, je n’accorde que peu d’importance aux critiques. Or là, le “trailer” semblait les confirmer. Mais voilà, n’étant pas totalement opposé à l’idée de le voir et prenant en compte les contingences de chacun, nous avons vu Whatever Works.

Quelle chance! Cela m’avait déjà fait le coup pour Fight Club. Emmené presque de force par un groupe d’amis, j’en suis ressorti plus qu’enchanté. Il est depuis dans ma (longue) liste de films cultes. Je crois bien que celui-là (Whatever Works) y entre directement dans le top 10.

En même temps, que penser d’autre d’un film où vous vous identifiez presque à 100% au personnage principal et que la quasi totalité de ce qu’il dit pourrait être dit par vous. (remarque de mes amis à la sortie du film: Mais, c’est un film sur toi!). Bref, osmose parfaite et sensation durant une heure et demie de partager une vision du monde. Troublant mais jouissif!

Par ailleurs, collusion temporelle inopinée, le premier single du nouvel album des Eels, End Times (prévu pour le 19 janvier 2010) est en téléchargement gratuit ici. Tellement Eels. Donc tellement bon!

As an update from a previous post here is the first track made available from the eels forthcoming new album “End Times” and I have to say it is up there with their best.

“Little Bird” – eels

1. 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

To buy the music of the eels click HERE

Doesn’t anyone else find this creepy? Cool, but creepy?

Having had a four-year hiatus, the Eels’ delivered to the world a strong comeback album, ‘Hombre Lobo’. Now, just months later they announce a new album, ‘End Times’. Here is the first single, ‘Little Bird,’ which Mark Oliver Everett, aka E., recorded playing all the instruments in his Los Angeles basement studio. The new album, ‘End Times,’ comes out Jan. 19, 2010.

There’s also a confirmed tracklisting for the album, which consists of fourteen tracks of varying length, we believe:

1. 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

myspace

Vom kommenden Album “End Times” (VÖ: 19.01.2010) der Eels kann man sich auf ihrer myspace-Seite einen ersten Song mit dem Titel “Little Bird” anhören.

So, sometimes when you’ve got the blues, you listen to The Blues, but sometimes when you’ve got the blues, you listen to unapologetically dour pop music. Today is apparently one of those days:

The first time I can really remember having the blues (ok, so it was crippling depression), was about age 18 or so. Insomnia was wrecking my physical and mental health, I felt like the walls were closing in on me, and several other factors basically caused me to have a bad time, all the time. I remember distinctly being in the depths of an unusual amount of despair, and watching a lot of MTV2 (which used to show music videos for those not old enough to remember that MTV used to show music videos too). Actually, I taped a lot of MTV2, and then would watch the videos at the end of the day, kind of like a precursor to Youtube, but without videos of pets playing pianos or kids having bad dentist trips. Anyway, at some point, I ran across a black and white video where everyone was floating, and the song had this beautiful, dark English melody, and the band was Eels and the song was “Novocaine For The Soul“.

I realized something while listening to “Novocaine For The Soul”, something that may not have done anything in the way of helping me through any hard times, but more of an amusing observation: I will never be as depressed as the writer of this song:

Life is hard, and so am I
Better give me something, so I don’t die
Novocaine for the soul
Before I sputter out

Naturally, I became quite a fan of the song, and it took coming out of that dark time of my life to realize that this song isn’t actually all that good. It, like the rest of the album it appears on, is self-pitying, helpless, and indulgent to a fault. Doesn’t mean I don’t love it, of course. Also, the video is brilliant, I’m starting to really become a fan of Mark Romanek (who also directed Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt” in what is perhaps my favorite music video ever).

Still, let’s look at the rest of the album. It’s kind of hard to get to the other songs that are any good, because you have to get through the second track, “Susan’s House”, at least once. “Susan’s House” has this canned beat that I swear was stolen from the Butthole Surfers at some point, and is a mostly spoken-word tune where “E” (or “Mr. E” or “Mark Oliver Everett” which is honestly the best of the three) describes random depressing scenes he sees on his way to Susan’s house, “Susan” probably being code name for a heroin dealer.

Much better tunes await us as we move on to “Rags To Rags”, which nearly takes the same 2-chord philosophy from “Novocaine”, but brings it all together for the chorus. Though it’s cut from the same black cloth as the previous pop song, it feels a little more personal and kind of beckons the listener to dig deeper into the album and see what all is going on in this mess of songs.

We then get the album’s title track, placed in the hallowed “fourth track” position, but instead of the album’s “hit”, it’s a somber tune played on an electric piano with a melody that sounds like it was stolen from one of Beck’s acoustic albums. The song was apparently written for “E”’s sister, who was suffering from suicide. Not to detract from the song’s thoughtfulness, but the lines:

Beautiful freak, beautiful freak
Too good for this world
But I hope that you stay

Didn’t really work. In fact, his sister’s eventual suicide inspired a lot of the next album, but let’s move on before we all kill ourselves, eh?

The album is not without its kind of “cutesy” moments, like “My Beloved Monster”, which is a little bit of a love song, little bit of a friendship song, with more banjos than probably belong on this album. Interestingly, they used the song in that Shrek movie, which is about a monster, if you didn’t know. It’s not interesting for the fact that this is a depressing song (Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” makes an appearance, after all) or that it’s a good song being used in a kids’ movie, but because it’s such a cop out, since this album was distributed by Dreamworks’ short-lived music label. Hmm!

Those in need of a good little jammin’ beat should look no further than “Guest List”, though the ridiculous self-indulgence of the lyrics is downright palpable:

Are you one of the beautiful people?
Is my name on the list
Wanna be of the beautiful people
Wanna feel like I’m missed

Are you one of the beautiful people
Am I on the wrong track?
Sometimes it feels like I’m made of eggshell
And it feels like I’m gonna crack

These are totally the kind of lyrics that, as an angsty teenager, I’m sure I would have really identified with, but here, about 10 years later, I would be slapping my head. In fact, I never obtained this album until recently.

Honestly though, it’s hard to get away from how great the melodies are in a lot of these songs, so there’s a lot of redeeming value to be found here. There are also enough musically unusual moments to keep one’s attention. A good example of this is the afore-mentioned “My Beloved Monster” and its layers of soloing instruments that sound like monsters roaring. Some of those moments are unintentional, like the percussion in “Mental”, I am seriously convinced that the drummer is hitting a basketball for this song.

One song that I wish wasn’t buried so far into the back of the album is “Your Lucky Day In Hell”, but at least I can hear it without having to watch Scream 2. The song has that really catchy “James Bond” chord movement, with some interesting lyrics for a change.

Either way, it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to get into albums like this on a “this album totally speaks to me man” sort of way, but on those days when you’re feeling a bit low, it’s always good to know that you will never be as depressed as the author of these songs. It’s also nice to remember a time when you could watch music videos on the television, good times.

L’homme ne fait pas toujours les choses dans l’ordre, c’est bien connu. Et Xidius étant de cette espèce, il lui arrive aussi de planter dans les procédures. Ainsi, il vous a filé un jour de la musique légalement venant d’un artiste très sympa il faut bien le dire mais s’est souvenu après coup que vous ne connaissiez peut être pas cet artiste vu que personne ne vous l’avait présenté ! Du coup, on se rattrape tout de suite et on va donc parler de ce cher Eels !

Il ne serait pas surprenant pour certains de connaître Eels car si le groupe n’est pas mondialement célèbre, il est opérationnel depuis bientôt 15 ans! Mené par Mark Oliver Everett, la formation venue de Los Angeles a livré son premier album, Beautiful Freak,  en 1996 et en a produit depuis 6 autres, à savoir Electro-Shock Blues, Daisies of the Galaxy, Souljacker, Shootenanny!, Blinking Lights and Other Revelations et enfin celui dont on va parler aujourd’hui, Hombre Lobo : 12 Songs of Desire ! Vous voulez du rock expérimental qui touche du bois et effectue son boulot comme il faut? Ce qui va suivre va vous plaire…

Hombre Lobo, c’est un album qui met la patate dès son introduction avec Prizefighter, titre à la rythmique simple, à la voix saturée et avec une gentille guitare qui finira par un chanteur n’hésitant pas à hurler quelque peu, l’ensemble rappelant quelque peu de bon vieux Bob Log III ! Tout cela semble joyeux et finalement, on se rend vite compte qu’avec ce disque, Eels ne fait pas dans la gaieté dès That look you give that guy, balade nostalgique et mélancolique. Un morceau qui fonctionne tellement bien que les bougres n’ont carrément pas hésité à réitérer la formule à plusieurs reprises sur le disque, avec In My Dreams, The Longing, All the Beautiful Things & Ordinary Man. Et le pire, c’est que ça fonctionne à chaque fois ! Mais ne vous laissez pas trop émouvoir par le chanteur de la formation qui est aussi un homme qui tel un chien sauvage est en rut et va se faire un plaisir à le clamer dans des titres rock/folk à l’image du premier, comme Lilac Breeze (difficile de faire plus explicite sur le refrain), Tremendous Dynamite (où les cris saturés, c’est un euphémisme, ont sérieusement tendance à tout déménager) avec ses cordes explosées ou bien What’s a Fella Gotta Do qui vous poussera forcément à vous trémoussez, 100% satisfait ! Et si l’on était pas déjà convaincu par la variété musicale du bonhomme (sachant que ses précédents albums présentent parfois des morceaux n’ayant vraiment pas grand chose à voir stylistiquement parlant avec celui çi), le disque réserve encore 2 cartouches pop fonctionnant à la perfection, My Timing is Off et le sympathique mais certes pas super original Beginner’s Luck (le titre expliquant cela?). Eels, c’est le petit groupe sympa qui mérite d’être écouté pour faire une pause entre deux albums bien métalliques (Ceci est un clin d’œil, le comprendrez vous?) et qui cache quelques surprises bienvenues. Allez, on prend le pari… Vous cliquez sur la pochette, et vous revenez nous dire que vous avez aimé. Pari lancé!

Xidius