Gig played on 23/05/05

He only laughs when it hurts: ha, ha, ouch, ha ha. And boy, does life hurt.

In the pictorial dictionary of rock, under the entry for "black comedy", there's surely a photo of natty-dressed Mark "E" Everett fronting an angelic string quartet and an apparently ramshackle but sharply-choreographed band on snowflake-pretty piano, theremin and drums made out of suitcases. And as black comedy goes, there's none more quick-witted: when he's not pretending Her Royal Highness is in the house (allegedly demanding a sweetly pedal-steeled rendition of "My Beloved Monster" and claiming she "likes the early stuff better") he's casting a wise-guy eye on the "old cat'n'mouse game" of encores.

In fact, if Everett didn't have a sumptuous knack for tunes as disparate as the folkily lovely "Theme From Blinking Lights" and the spooky-toyshop capers of "Flyswatter", he'd make a fine thirty-something replacement for George Burns, all croaky cigar-waving chutzpah and world-weary wisdom. He's already working on his fogeydom, to judge from a finale of "Things The Grandchildren Should Know".

But in the meantime, it's hard not to notice three things about Mr E. First, it's amply clear - just check out titles like "Going To Your Funeral Part 2", "Suicide Life", "Son Of A Bitch", "Dog-Faced Boy" and "Losing Streak" - that he's still ploughing the bleak furrow of Eels' 1996 debut, "Beautiful Freaks". We're talking orphans. Tramps. Black eyes. Bruised hearts. Cancer, suicide and 9/11. Tales of the dysfunctional that, in lesser hands, would read like a grim cross between therapy kitsch and bad creative-writing-class stories about lonely old ladies feeding pigeons in the park.

Secondly, tonight reminds you that a gift for melodies, a crack band and an ability to pull deliciously graceful sounds out of thin air allows E, like Nick Cave, to take listeners willingly down the darkest paths in the emotional forest. Tonight, Everett spins startling beauty out of bleakness: the John Lennon-esque consolation of "In The Yard, Behind The Church"; a mandolin-fuelled "From Which I Came" and Wilco-esque "Dirty Girl" dripping homespun gentility; a sly, slouchy "I Like Birds", a Simon & Garfunkel-quoting "Girl From The North Country".

And finally, a set built around a career-best new album, "Blinking Lights And Other Revelations", just can't help revealing E's real USP. Namely, hope and humanity. Which takes us back to "Things The Grandchildren Should Know", as Everett shrugs "It's not all good and it's not all bad" and "In the end I'd like to say/That I'm a very thankful man." Ladiesngennulmen, the king of black comedy. He'll make you cry, cry, cry and laugh. And leave you with the thought that it just might be worth sticking around to be that hundred-year-old codger with a cigar and a twinkling smile.

by Jennifer Nine