Eels mainstay E is a misunderstood man. Even his name is misunderstood - E apparently being Mark Oliver Everett's childhood nickname (all his friends were called Mark), not, as commonly thought, a pretentiously artsy appendage for an eccentric master of twinkling lo-fi.
It's an easy mistake to make though. Like the assumption that 1998's spectacularly miserable 'Electro-shock Blues' album, inspired by the death of his mother from cancer, was depressing. According to E, it was actually the most positive and up lifting album he'll ever make. So there.
'Shootenanny!' is equally easy to misinterpret. If its predecessor, 2001's slyly hysterical study of what it is to be a social outcast, 'Souljacker', was an uncharacteristically strident marriage of black comedy and obvious tunes, his fifth album is a return to quieter, more familiar Eels territory. Along with the deadpan introspection and nursery rhyme melodies, ambiguity is key.
The title 'Shootenanny!', a noun of E's own creation for "a social gathering at which participants engage in folk singing and sometimes dancing, but mostly the shooting of guns" might suggest a scathing attack on American gun culture. In truth, it's more a clue to the album's sniggering sense of irony. Take 'Somebody Loves You' and 'Fashion Awards'. Both are wonderfully soft and folksy lullabies; the former concerned with contemplating death; the latter an ode to the world of couture, culminating in a chorus of "and we'll blow off our heads in despair".
The woozy stupor of 'Agony' murmurs with genuine feeling, but elsewhere there's plenty to hint that this isn't E at his most sincere. 'Dirty Girl''s jaunty country comes with love for girls who swear, 'Saturday Morning' is Dandy Warhols style rock posturing about the frustration of being six years old waiting for your parents to wake up, and the album's sweetest love song tells of a man separated from his one true love by a restraining order ('Restraining Order Blues').
E's done his share of moody and meaningful. Now he's having a laugh. However, sometimes his humour is so subtle it's like he's testing for listener gullibility. His mumblings of fortune tellers and laundrettes over 'All In A Day's Work''s harmonica squawking blues all sounds fantastically cryptic and metaphorical, but it's about as deep as Beck at his nonsense spouting best.
Ultimately, 'Shootenanny!' is nothing more than an endearing collection of random thoughts. What's amazing is that even when he's got absolutely nothing to say, E's skewed perspective still has the ability to make you think.
