Eels, End Times

Posted on February 5, 2010 by Paul Murphy

The Eels eight studio album, End Times, is the sound of an artist growing older in uncertain times. An artist who has lost his great love while struggling with his faith in an increasingly hostile world teetering on self-destruction. It makes for a stunning piece of music that may be some of his best work yet.

End TImes should be depressing, but its not, Mark Oliver Everett aka E has an incredible talent for expressing his walking tragedy in such a beautiful way. Just look back to when he sung “Turn the ugly light out God,” lyrics that should have you hanging your head in a pool of self pity but they don’t.

No stranger to loss, death and other sorrowful aspects of humanity Everett has now gone through a break up and this is his divorce album. It has the feel as though when his now ex-wife slammed the door, E grabbed his guitar, piano his four track and hid in the basement for a week and this is what came out.

It has the feel as though when his now ex-wife slammed the door, E grabbed his guitar, piano and a four track hid in the basement for a week and this is what came out.

On the album E takes his own situation and puts it alongside the dying world that he is trying to find comfort in. “Everyone’s crazy and lost their minds, just look at the world…She’s gone, end times are here” from the title track pretty much sum up the whole story of the album.

It starts with a song called the Beginning a lament to how this whole tragedy began, almost a “how did I not see this coming?” song. He’s alone, sad and in his basement with an acoustic guitar for this one and it’s like he just doesn’t know where to turn.

But Gone Man, opens with a fast beat and up tempo rhythm. “I talk to the dark so I know that I’m alive…she’s gone man. Gone” In My Younger Days is another intimate guitar and singer piece “I’ve got a little ways to go, It’s not over yet, I know. But it feels not so far away”, E looks at how when he was younger that this would still have knocked him but he’d have been able to jump straight back up. “I’m not resigned to fate, I’m not going to be ruled by hate. But it’s strong and it’s filling up my days.”

Apple Trees is a forty second piece where E speaks like he has on so many tracks including Susan’s House. E deals with a suicide bomber heading out to take out a few people, kill himself and head to paradise with Paradise Blues.

The album, though without some of the usual odd sounds that E employs, does have one strange track just of noise which captures his emptiness. It is the ambient sound of a storm outside the window called High and Lonesome. I Need a Mother is a lonesome piano song that really needs no explanation.

We all know, some of  us more than others, how important it is to deal with difficult situations through expressing yourself. E has put out albums to deal with untimely deaths of relatives and other heartaches before, yet his music is amazing and beautiful as he exposes his vulnerablity and lets the world in. How he does this without sounding depressing is a mystery. “God damn, I miss that girl”.

Drop-d Rating 8.8/10

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