The Good: Decent compilation of music that sounds good, Different and diverse sound, DVD bonus!
The Bad: Some weaker tracks, Some repetition.
The Basics: Meet The Eels is truly the essential works of Mark Oliver Everett and Eels and a worthwhile album in its own right.
Every now and then, I find a "greatest hits" album of a group that amuses me because the artist(s) involved has had only one or two radio-played songs or hits. For all my love of Sophie B. Hawkins, for example, I remain somewhat mystified that there exists The Best Of Sophie B. Hawkins and despite the title, it does not contain all of her best works. Similarly, it amused me when - after only two mainstream singles succeeded - Barenaked Ladies released Greatest Hits Volume 1. So, when my study of Eels began, it caused me to smile when the band's compilation of "essential" works crossed my desk.
To be fair, the Eels album Meet The Eels does not claim to be the "best of" Eels, but rather "Essential Eels" (perhaps they just like alliteration?). The truth is, it might well be; the diversity of sound is not as monolithic as on some of the prior E and Eels albums I have reviewed. Unlike one note of mumbled, universally melancholy lyrics put to pretty standard keyboard and guitar tracks, Meet The Eels is actually a fairly diverse collection. Under the heading of "repetition breeds acceptance," I find myself enjoying the ironic and poppy "Hey Man (Now You're Really Living)" quite a bit more on this mix alongside other more upbeat songs like "Mr. E's Beautiful Blues." It still does not sound like any other Eels song and it is disappointingly poppy in its sound, but it is not the anthem of the antichrist I once felt it was.
With twenty-four tracks occupying a substantial seventy-four minutes, Meet The Eels - Essential Eels Vol. I, 1996 – 2006 is a collection of the singles and best known tracks by Eels in that time period plus one cover ("Get Ur Freak On") that seems to be on the album mostly to encourage fans to pick up the b-sides album "Useless Trinkets." Eels, for those who do not know - until recently that included me! -, is a band that varies in number and members much the way Oasis does, with the core being E, the artist also known as Mark Oliver Everett. Everett wrote or co-wrote all of the songs on Meet The Eels (save "Get Ur Freak On"). He plays numerous musical instruments (there are very few notations of this in the liner notes to this album) and produced or co-produced all of the songs on the album. As well, he is credited as one of many mixing engineers, so it seems he is integral to every level of this album. In other words, despite the artists who have come and gone as part of Eels, E's musical vision seems to be what defines the band and this compilation is an excellent collection of those talents.
Musically, Meet The Eels is an impressively diverse work. Songs range from mellow pop-rock ("Fresh Feeling," "I Like Birds") to quiet ballads ("I'm Going To Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heart") to songs that have a folk-rock vibe ("Railroad Man"). Instrumentally, Eels has a boatload of creativity with it use of strings on songs like "Fresh Feeling" that are not traditionally associated with pop, rock or even alternative music. As well, when E goes for it he can mix styles quite well. The Eels song "That's Not Really Funny" is an excellent example as it mixes mellow rock and tango rhythms. There is the hip-hop cover ("Get Ur Freak On"), but most of the music is much more mellow like "Novocaine For The Soul" and "Love Of The Loveless."
And there is a pretty traditional pop-rock song in the form of "Hey Man (Now You're Really Living)." While it contains the similar disturbed and angsty lyrics that many of E's songs possess, it is presented as an upbeat pop song complete with handclaps and backing vocals that encourage the listener to sing along. This is the exception to the rule. But on Meet The Eels, there are fewer rules than any of the (almost) universally mellow albums by Eels I have listened to before. Still, Eels is hardly "alternative," just unknown. Songs like "Saturday Morning" are guitar-driven tracks that sound like the best of high school garage bands in terms of instrumentation. To be fair, most of the songs are more diverse in their sound than that, including obscure instruments like the autoharp, but he creates fairly safe and true pop-rock sounding songs with those instruments. The result is an enjoyable, but hardly audacious musical mix.
Generally, Everett sings his own songs and he tends not to be accompanied by excessive background accompaniment. His vocals range from mid-range, mellow vocals like on "Love Of The Loveless" and "Flyswatter" to . . . well, actually, he stays pretty firmly in his auditory niche. On "Dirty Girl" (performed live on this disc) he goes for a more raspy sound, emulating the likes of Tom Waits. He has a decent voice, when he wants to portray it that way.
The rest of the time, he mumbles through is own songs, though the mix on Meet The Eels is generally better articulated than some of his other musical outings. "I Need Some Sleep" features Everett going higher, into the falsetto range for parts that are distinctly different from his other vocalizations.
And if nothing else, Everett does have something to say and he uses Eels quite well to do that. Many of the songs are fearlessly self-referential and expressive of his depression. Indeed, he makes his pain musical on songs like "Last Stop: This Town." On that song, he wrote the well-considered lines "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? . . . What if I was not your only friend / In this world / Can you take me where you're going / If you're never coming back" ("Last Stop: This Town"). He makes the lines of loneliness and longing sound musical and articulate.
As well, he is able to play with words and conventions on some of his songs in such a way that it delightfully turns the expectations upside down. There is something occasionally demented about his poetry, but he makes it work and those who stick with Eels can enjoy the lines "Field mice, head lice / Spiders in the kitchen / Don't think twice 'bout / Whatever keeps you itchin' / Ice water, flyswatter / Gonna get you through / The day / Heat is rolling in like hell's / red rug / Stinking like the breath of beelzebub / And if you think you won't walk on coals / You will" ("Flyswatter"). Everett has a wonderful sense of imagery in many of his songs and "Flyswatter" helps illustrate that.
But largely, the lines Everett pens are stark interpretations of ennui and he sings them that way, like he does when he sings "You don't have a clue / What it is like to be next to you / I'm here to tell you / That it is good / That it is true / Birds singing a song / Old paint is peeling / This is that fresh / That fresh feeling / Words can't be that strong / My heart is reeling" ("Fresh Feeling"). Even his sense of love is compromised by melancholy!
But what the album is not is homogeneously depressing. Instead, this is a decent mix and a good example of what Eels can do, making it truly the Essential Eels. Oddly, here in its distilled form is the album by Eels I have been waiting for!
The best track is "Last Stop: This Town," the low point is "Get Ur Freak On."
For other works by Eels, be sure to check out my reviews of:
A Man Called E
Blinking Lights And Other Revelations
Electro-Shock Blues
8/10
For other music reviews, be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!
© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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