‘Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire’ by Eels

He’s a funny chap, E from Eels. He spends ages making ‘Blinking Lights and Other Revelations’, an intricate double album full of beauty, then he puts out an album which sounds like it was written and recorded over the course of a weekend before following it up with another two albums inside a year.

When this album was announced, I had low expectations. It was promoted as a sequel to ‘Souljacker’, my least favourite Eels album by a long way, so I imagined this would be a fairly heavy, indeed oppressive album of angry indie. In actual fact, it’s a true gem – light, delicate, and a real pleasure to hear. I said a minute ago that it sounded like an album made very fast – somehow, this adds to its qualities rather than distracting from it.

‘Prizefighter’ begins the album with an infectiously catchy foot-stomping two-chord romp. ‘That Look You Gave That Guy’ continues with a fragile composition overlaid with the most minimal overdubs possible. The next few tracks swing between these two points without putting a foot wrong along the way. Only right in the middle of the album does the content become a little more dense – ‘The Longing’ is one of those incredibly bleak solo performances that E does so well, and ‘Fresh Blood’ is a lurking beast of a song, and the most obvious link to ‘Souljacker’. It works better in isolation than it would have done stretched across the album as a whole. The second half of the album contains a run of songs that would have sat happily on ‘Blinking Lights’ – whether they were left-overs or written for the task, I don’t know, and I couldn’t care less. Either way, they deserve to be heard. Genuinely, the only downside to this album is how quickly it was followed up: ‘End Times’ and ‘Tomorrow Morning’ both came so fast, it would be easy to overlook this album entirely. Easy, but a foolish mistake.

'Electro-Shock Blues Show' by Eels

As well as their regular album discography, Eels have released a whole collection of live albums via their website. This wasn't the first, but it was the first one I got, as a result of my brother's inadverdant criminality - he ordered an album, it arrived, it got hidden under a pile of stuff, he mistakenly asked for a replacement which ended up being mine.

'Electro-Shock Blues Show' was recorded in 1998 during the 'Electro-Shock Blues' tour, and released four years later. At the time, the Eels act consisted of only E, drummer Butch and and bassist Adam Siegel. This three piece version of the band leads to a very stark set of arrangements - bass, drums and organ or guitar. This gives the songs a real punch, but if anything, ups their intensity. It's great stuff. The vast majority of the songs are taken from 'Electro-Shock Blues', and Eels show no real sign of pandering to the crowd with the more popular stuff - 'Novocaine For The Soul' and 'My Beloved Monster' are both here, but in radically reworked form, and 'Not Ready Yet' is blown out to a hugely indulgent thirteen minutes. Seasonal track 'Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas' is hugley incongrous, but a welcome spot of light relief.

It's easy to see why this wasn't released in shops - a hard sell to the average consumer, but a good listen for the fanbase.

‘Electro-Shock Blues’ by Eels

There are melancholic albums, there are miserable albums, and there are very miserable albums. Then there’s ‘Electro-Shock Blues’.

In a sense, this should be no massive surprise. ‘Electro-Shock Blues’ was conceived and written as a response to Mark Everett’s sister’s suicide, and his mother’s death from lung cancer, so it was never going to be especially cheerful. Right from the word go, the listener is plunged into a sad and fragile world – ‘Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor’ and ‘Going To Your Funeral Part 1’ are as a bleak a way as you can imagine to open an album, and when an album’s most upbeat track is called ‘Cancer For The Cure’, you get a pretty good sense of what to expect from the rest of the record.

At the same time, the emotional intensity of this album remains surprising. His previous album, ‘Beautiful Freak’ had dark moments, but was commercially-orientated enough to supply three hit singles and win a Brit award, something which would have been unthinkable with this album. It would be fair to say, therefore, that this record set the path that E, and whatever forms Eels have taken since, have followed ever since. He has remained an individual – full of surprises, and never willing to make an album that just sounds like the last one.

There are glimmers of hope through the album – ‘Last Stop: This Town’ is all about death, but it’s sung with a smile, ‘Ant Farm’ is kind of sweet, in its own way, and ‘P.S. You Rock My World’ is some kind of attempt to finish on a note of optimism. Even in the bleaker moments, however, there are some wonderful moments on the album – ‘Efil’s God’ has a pleasant breeziness, and ‘Climbing To The Moon’ is a truly wonderful song.

So ‘Electro-Shock Blues’ isn’t for the faint hearted, and it wouldn’t work for all moods, but it’s a great record despite, and perhaps even because of those things.

‘Daisies Of The Galaxy’ by Eels

If emotion can be charted on a graph, there was only one direction that ‘Daisies of the Galaxy’ could go, following the ultra-bleak ‘Electro-Shock Blues’. It’s a testament to Mark Everett’s misery that this album was, and arguably still remains, the most upbeat and cheerful record in the Eels back catalogue. Some of it genuinely sounds happy – ‘Grace Kelly Blues’, ‘I Like Birds’ and ‘Tiger In My Tank’ all sound like they were sung with a smile – but much of it is either still run through with a sense of melancholy (‘Jeannie’s Diary’), or an unsettling sense of peculiarity (‘Flyswatter’, ‘The Sound of Fear’). Even amongst the relative cheeriness, Everett still manages to squeeze in track 7. So, despite being the happiest Eels album in existence, it’s an album you’re unlikely to reach for if you want cheering up.

Never-the-less, ‘Daisies of the Galaxy’ is a lovely album. Instrumentally, it’s gentler than ‘Beautiful Freak’, more accessible than ‘Electro-Shock Blues’, and much easier to listen to than ‘Souljacker’, the album that came next. Awash with acoustic instruments and piano, it would make very pleasant background music if it wasn’t for vocals which demand your attention. Even at his most commercially pleasing, Everett refuses to make any kind of music other than exactly what he wants to make, and as usual, he should be applauded for this.

'Beautiful Freak' by Eels

In my head, the Eels career trajectory went from mainstream indie band to deliberate industry outsider. My memories of 'Beautiful Freak' were of a good, but relatively straightforward commerical success. Commercial success it was, of course - it went top 5, and spawned two top 10 singles - it even won a brit award. All of these would be unthinkable achievements from an Eels album now.

What's interesting listening back to the album now is how Eels-like it is. It may have achieved mainstream success, but it's a pretty uncompromising album both lyrically and musically. Mark Everett writes lyrics as miserable as anyone else in music, and this album has as many examples as any other album, particularly during 'Mental' and 'Your Lucky Day In Hell'. The music, whilst more electric-guitar-heavy than many of his other records, is still littered with glockenspiel, top-end piano and synth pads.

'Beautiful Freak' isn't an album to listen to if you need cheering up, but it's a great record. What it lacks in experimentation, it makes up for in focus, and general quality. It'll never be remembered as the quintessential Eels album - that would surely be 'Daisies of the Galaxy' of 'Blinking Lights' - but it's very, very good.