End Times

These 14 mostly short songs mark Mark Oliver Everett's eighth album under the Eels moniker.


E is more defiantly desperate this time, as if it is the only option and he will not go anywhere but down. The press release from Shock rejects the idea it is Eels first "break-up record", pointing back to the 93 Everett LP Broken Toy Shop.


The first effort, The Beginning, is sparse, sombre alt-country with just a lightly strummed acoustic and E's rustic voice talking of how "everything was beautiful and free in the beginning". It's the language of a luckless couple entwined not anymore by love but by habit. "Didn't have nowhere to go, didn't matter that the night was getting cold".


It's countered by Gone Man that's oddly reminiscent of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club when they slow down but maintain the grind. Lyrically E's no happier, pondering "how much longer for this Earth" and find his comfort "in a dying world".


At this point it's clear End Times is what it is, there will be no relent. It puts it beyond a mere break-up album. It sits next to Beck's Seachange. Adjectives likes haunting and beautiful come to the fore but miss the mark.


These songs are honest.


And for that they are very rare and worthy of much admiration. He gets comparison to Springsteen, to the better Oberst work.


Mansions of Los Feliz is an Americana treasure filled with the story of the United States as it stands in 2010. "It's a pretty bad place out there" and E's living on "the edge of my mind". Just like elsewhere there is his voice and a guitar accompanied by the odd strum of a bass. There is no percussion, no call for harmonies or vocal trickery and it's all over in two minutes forty nine.


He finds room for reflection on the piano driven A line in the Dirt with talk of pissing in the yard but soon "things aren't funny" and neither are the minor chords and downcast high hat. It's the finest song amongst a collection of beauties. Gentle horns ache behind a voice marked by the agony of finality.


Given it's only January this is definitely a contender for the album of the year.