I Am Not Hamlet

A little ball of cottony lightning tumbled in my stomach as I opened the package today. Hombre Lobo , the new Eels album was delivered to my mailbox this afternoon. I promptly tore off the plastic wrap and inserted the CD into my player. The little ball of cottony lightning soon fizzled out. Most of the "12 songs of desire" are only moderately interesting. A 4/4 tempo, minimal sonic colors, and bland lyrics unfortunately dominate on this. Only "Fresh Blood", "All the Beautiful Things", and "Beginner's Luck", approach E's usual compositional talent. It's not that the album sucks, but E has set the bar much higher than this--hence the disappointment. Artists tend to fluctuate in their output, this just happens to be a lower point in the Eels arc. You could find better starting places in their discography if you haven't listened to Eels before. If you're already a fan, you may find more to like than I did, but ...

Last Saturday, Hillbilly Holmes and I saw our third Eels show at Detroit's Majestic Theatre. The first, back in 05, the "With Strings Tour" has to be in my top 10 of best concerts ever. Then the "No Strings Attached Tour" in 06(?) was good, noisy, entertaining, but nowhere near the level of brilliance as the first show we saw. This latest incarnation was stripped down even more. Just E and The Chet, no bass player again, playing piano, pump organ, drums, guitar, pedal steel, mandolin, and percussion. Usually concerts so stripped down are about as entertaining as plywood. Eels can pull it off. What's really fascinating is the different versions of songs played. For instance, "Flyswatter" a noisy, creepy rocker from the "Daisies" album was rocked with only piano and drums. With a gimmicky, but nonetheless entertaining switch by E and The Chet on their two instruments the originally short song was lengthened by about 4-5 minutes. ...