FFWD Weekly
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| CD REVIEWS EELS · Second album from band built around singer/songwriter E (Mark Oliver Everett). Guests include Grant Lee Phillips (Grant Lee Buffalo), Michael Simpson (Dust Brothers) and Lisa Germano. · CD packaging features the talents of comic book artists Debbie Dreschler, Joe Matt & Chester Brown, Adrian Tomine, Seth, and E himself. "Hospital Food." It's a song title on the latest eels album and, sadly, considering what the band have to offer, an apt description of the music contained throughout: drab, colorless, forgettable provisions that fill an empty space and do precious little else Where its predecessor, Beautiful Freak, provided an endearing amount of Beck-like electro pop quirk via songs such as "Novocaine for the Soul" and "Susan's House," Electro-Shock Blues sinks like Morphine on Prozak into songwriter E's self-absorbed sea of emotional despair- several friends and family members were dead or dying as he wrote much of the material - rarely floating to the surface for a breath of fresh air. Granted, there's nothing wrong with wallowing in a funk and embracing the dark sides of yourself, but there should be redemption, reasoning, or even a moment of immeasurable insight that transcends or illuminates the emotional level on which it was written. On the few occasions where there is a spark of inspired melody or lyrical phrasing like the song "3 Speed" which begins so promising, its all eventually drowned out by instrumental melancholia or lines like: "Life is funny/ But not ha ha funny/ Peculiar I guess/ You think I got it all going my way/ Then why am I such a fucking mess?" It's as if, in the end, E decided it was better to give up. The only thing Electro-Shock Blues inspires is for us to do the same. 2/5 |