The Eels, Meet The Eels: Essential Eels and Useless Trinkets: B-Sides, Soundtracks, Rarities And Unreleased

by Gordon Lamb
02/21/2008

First, a confession: I have always been unfairly dismissive of The Eeels. From the first time I heard the band's single "Novocaine for The Soul" circa 1996 I had thought of the band as silly and gimmicky. However, perpetual spins of the new Eels retrospective Meet The Eels: Essential Eels and its companion set Useless Trinkets: B-Sides, Soundtracks, Rarities And Unreleased, have done more than just made me a believer in the talent of founder Mark Everett (AKA Mr. E or, simply, E.). His songs have brought me to tears. Not only has his plain-spoken lyricism spoken directly to me but his carefully layered melodies, darkly observant musings of life and the everyday have caused me to question why I was so easily dismissive over a decade ago.

Generally speaking, it’s probably reasonable to be suspicious of anything coming from a major label (in this case Geffen Records) that collects recordings covering the years 1996-2006. The short of it is that by the mid-1990’s the major label community was latterly snatching up any artist with even a remote connection to the underground, any sort of oddball (by mainstream standards, at least) technique or style and, basically, anything they thought they could pawn off on a generation drunk on Lollapalooza and Alternative Rock radio. The bargain bins and landfills are full of the cynically marketed alterna-dreck from this time. The idea of artist development, which is now a completely forgotten notion, was on its way out very quickly. That said, The Eels, never a multi-platinum hit machine, have enjoyed a modest, sustainable career without ever falling off the label’s roster. All of which is to say that thank God someone got it right.

The collection, which includes songs from each of Eels studio albums (Beautiful Freak, Electro-Shock Blues, Daisies Of The Galaxies, Souljacker, Shootenanny! and Blinking Lights And Other Relevations), is a heavy document. Due to its nature, and with particular regard to the song selection, it’s much less a compilation of singles than it is a biography with an associated psychological profile. Everett has mastered the art of both describing the world in plain terms but, while working within the technique (and, perhaps, because of it) he renders it as simultaneously (which is to say distinct from alternately) sad and scary, confusing and beautiful, wondrous and tired.

Musically, Everett works with a varied palette which encompasses the whole canon of self-created pop visionaries. The songs drip as if being freshly painted with increasing levels of guitar layers, synchronized rhythm tracks, piano melodies and bursts of guitar solos. It’s as if nothing is ever quite finished. However, oddly enough, nothing sounds half-finished, either. Significantly, for as much as the songs sound like sketches sometimes nothing here ever sounds like a demo. What’s missing is any level of resolution with which listeners have become accustomed. We like our artists to wrap things up in the space of three minutes. What Everett explores, though, are precisely those things which are rarely resolved at all. If the songs sound like they were continually reworked it’s because such is life itself.

For all the real-world evidence of Everett’s tenuous grasp on his own mental stability, he remains aware of this, which begs the eternal question of whether one is crazy if they can wonder if they’re crazy. No, Everett’s not crazy but he does teeter perceptibly, perhaps irrevocably, on the edge of a very deep pain by which he has been regularly visited. That he manages to extract himself is surprising if not miraculous. The lyrical changes between The Eels debut, Beautiful Freak, and subsequent albums is the change between a misfit artist participating in some rote navel gazing and a grown man overwhelmed by the world he is perpetually in love with. “Novocaine for The Soul” asks for “Something/ Before I lose control” and “Susan’s House” features the street-scene observations of, among other urban tragedies, “...a girl with long brown hair/ Who can't be more than seventeen/ She sucks on a red popsicle while she pushes a baby girl in a pink carriage/ And I'm thinking that must be her sister/ That must be her sister, right?”.

By the time Everett recorded Electro-Shock Blues he had lost his sister to suicide and was anticipating the death of his mother from cancer. As such, the songs are heartbreakingly real and shockingly honest. “Last Stop: This Town” exclaims “You're dead but the world keeps spinning/ Take a spin through the world you left/ It's getting dark a little too early/ Are you missing the dearly bereft?”. With this Everett is deftly able to express anger without passing judgment. Further, the gorgeous “Climbing Up (To The Moon” quietly, but angrily, refuses the world while seeking to overcome it. Everett sings, “Got a sky that looks like heaven/ Got an earth that looks like shit/ And it's getting hard to tell where/ What I am ends/ And what they're making me begins” but ends with “I won't be denied this time/ 'fore I go out of my mind over matters/ Got my foot on the ladder/ And I'm climbing up to the moon”.

Continuing this theme Everett does his Randy Newman best with the lyrical twists in “Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues”, from Daisies Of The Galaxies, with lines such as “The smokestack spitting black soot into the sooty sky/ ...Goddamn right it's a beautiful day” but he is still wrecked by the world he loves and the one that has changed on him (“It's a motherfucker/ Being here without you/ Thinking 'bout the good times/ Thinking 'bout the bad/ And I won't ever be the same/ It's a motherfucker/ ...Getting through a Sunday.”)

But the real turning point, it seems, comes toward the end of the collection with “I’m Going To Stop Pretending That I Didn’t Break Your Heart” from 2005’s Blinking Lights And Other Revelations. For the first time, at least explicitly, Everett is coming to terms with the fact that he is not only able to be hurt by the world and its residents but that he, too, can cause pain for others. It’s more, however, than a simple wake-up call. It’s a case of Everett having, relatively speaking, coming to terms with his own humanity and the fact that he is not simply observing and feeling the effect of the world but is, as a human being, an active participant and member of it. He sings to a nameless person in his past, “I'm gonna tell you what you need to hear/ ...And it may not make much sense/Now that we are apart/ But I'm going to stop pretending/ That I didn't break your heart/ ...And I want to tell you I'm sorry/And it's too late to start/ ...And it's Christmas Eve/Years down the line/ Sitting here wishing I'd treated you better/ When you were mine/ And I have no way of knowing where you are/ ...I didn't mean to hurt you/I didn't know what I was doing.” He finishes by admitting, both to his object and to himself, “But I know what I have done”.

The bonus DVD that is included with Meet The Eels feature 12 Eels videos and Useless Trinkets features two-CDs with a total of 50 (!) rare tracks, soundtrack appearances and other oddities. Also included is a DVD of The Eels performance at the 2006 Lollapalooza Festival. These are all cool things to have and explore but the real meat of these releases lies in the 24 tracks of the first disc of Meet The Eels.

There is much that seems essential to The Eels story that is not contained herein, betraying the subtitle of the collection, but for someone like me who was previously, coldheartedly dismissive, this was a wonderful introduction. For one who has never felt one way or the other, or is completely unaware of the Eels, it is recommended listening.

As I said earlier, these songs have driven me to tears; Sometimes so much that I had to stop the record mid-song. At first, I assumed it was because I was relating to, or at least sympathizing/empathizing with, what Everett was feeling when he wrote them. While that’s not completely incorrect, it’s also not totally honest. The reason I would tear up each time I heard these songs was because The Eels held a mirror in front of me and I realized that the reason I was so effected by Everett’s music was not because I felt too strongly but, rather, because I had, for so long, not felt strongly enough.

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