Eels – End Times

End Times, the eighth album from EELS — a rotating group formed and fronted by Mark Oliver Everett (a.k.a. E) — is a measured, diligent, and at times glowing indie-folk/pop effort. It explores the varying shades of mellow and, yet, of biting self-reflection, mining the Bon-Iver-and-Modest-Mouse (though a bit more chilled-out than the latter) section of the music world.

The disc’s second song is the up-tempo, yet reservedly introspective “Gone Man,” a lament disguised as a fast-paced blues-rocker. “Mansions of Los Feliz” boasts a country twang (both from the guitars and Everett’s inflections) and title to match. The next track, “A Line in the Dirt,” is quite a strong one — vocally, lyrically vulnerable. It’s, as the French say for film sequences between couples (usually taking place at home), a scène de ménage or a “household scene”; the song’s narrator tells of his significant other shutting herself up in the bathroom, while he tries to coax her out and also perform household (as well as bodily) functions. To use another fine arts metaphor, Everett executes, in this fifth song of the disc, a sort of genre painting, detailing a scene from everyday life. The genre work is basically a still life with people, and that’s what is presented here—as he sings of a possible dispute with his girlfriend or just a difficult time for her.

On the next number, the full-length’s title track, Everett delivers rough-hewn, intimate, last-ditch vocals on doomsday, lovelorn, and downright melancholic lyrics, all while sounding uncannily like Bruce Springsteen on one of his solo albums. Again, the subject is relationships and, this time, the out-and-out departure of “she” — reinforced by the proselytizing of a bearded, street-corner Jesus freak, preaching, as Everett intones, “End times are here.” After a brief, humbling spoken piece on man’s insignificance (“Apple Trees”), “Paradise Blues” provides a rapid, fairly-rollicking ride through different possibilities of the word “paradise,” contrasting romantic love with the goal of a suicide bomber.

“Nowadays,” another track on End Times that’s definitely worth checking out, is next up and is a warm-hearted, though rather dismal, missive about taking stock of one’s life, realizing what one needs to let go of, and grappling with isolation versus contact with the outside world. All in all, Everett and company extol the virtues of pared-down instrumentation and self-reflection on End Times, leading to an album replete with the realization that difficult days are here and one may very well be “haunted by…better days” (as Everett sings on “Nowadays”) in the ones to come.

Tagged as: indie folk, Los Angeles

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