Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 01/06/09
Label: Polydor

The four years since the release of Eels' masterpiece, "Blinking Lights And Other Revelations", has been punctuated by the career-mopping compilations, "Essential Eels Vol 1", and "Useless Trinkets: B-Sides, Soundtracks, Rarities And Unreleased", the acclaimed autobiography "Things The Grandchildren Should Know" and "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives", the award-winning documentary about Eels lynchpin E and his quantum physicist father Hugh Everett III. Surely, with such a personal and professional spring clean, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Mark Oliver Everett (aka E) had said all there is to say.

Fortunately not as this time, E finds himself driving a series of narratives away from his autobiographical modus operandi to that of the Hombre Lobo - or, werewolf - of the title and the feral howling that ushers in the stomping raw blues of "Prizefighter" is entirely appropriate.

Subtitled "12 Songs Of Desire", the album eschews the widescreen panorama of its predecessor to favour the grit of 2001's "Souljacker". Consequently, the journey that E takes us across this dirty dozen is road mapped with episodes of drooling ("Tremendous Dynamite"), moments of lust ("What's A Fella Gotta Do") and exposure to vulnerability ("My Timing Is Off").

Returning again to the form of blues and rock'n'roll that Eels have patented courtesy of rolling bass lines and a more than a cursory nod to hip-hop dynamics, the album's concerns are fleshed out by a production that feels as if it's been hog-tied to the back of a wagon train and dragged through the driest, most acrid desert imaginable and this is an approach that works hugely in the album's favour. With E excessively hirsute once more as he revisits his Dog Faced Boy persona again, the urge to respond instinctively to the full moon is undeniably irresistible.

And yet, as exemplified by the priapic groove of "Lilac Breeze" or the understated tenderness of "The Look You Gave That Guy", Eels manage to paint contemporary aural brush strokes whilst remaining utterly timeless; there's nothing here that carbon dates their sound yet the irony is the use of a tried and tested formula that harks bark to rock's most elemental origins. Harnessed to poignancy and a set of universal truths based on states of emotion identifiable to all but the most psychotic, Eels have stuck upon a formula that is never formulaic.

But what truly counts here is persona and with E casting himself as dog in heat, eager to reach a scratch that he just can't itch, the end result is yet another facet to a continually engaging and truly unique artist.

    by Julian Marszalek