ALBUM: Eels - Electro Shock Blues (1998)

20 years ago today saw the release of the second Eels album Electro Shock Blues. Mark Everett (aka E) wrote the bleak and brilliant album following his sister's suicide and his mother's battle with terminal lung cancer. Many of the record's songs deal with his response to their passing and coming to terms with suddenly becoming the only living member of the Everett family (until the birth of his son Archie a few years ago).

Listen to the album in full below via YouTube. If you appreciate the music, go out and buy yourselves a copy, and support the artists.

The Wikipedia entry on Electro Shock Blues sums it up nicely when it opines that ""hough much of the album is, on its surface, bleak, its underlying message is that of coping with some of life's most difficult occurrences."

Everett's father was the renowned physicist Dr. Hugh Everett III. Aged 19, E found his father dead. His troubled sister, Elizabeth, committed suicide in 1996, around the time that the Eels were recording their smash hit debut album Beautiful Freak. His mother was terminally ill with lung cancer. Following her passing, the man known to many as E found himself in the unenviable position of being the last surviving member of his entire family. As an artist, he he could not ignore these things in his work, "feeling that anything else would be an act". So he set about the writing and recording of an album that "was inspired by, and that would deal with the tragedies in his life, but only if it could offer a new point of view, and a positive resolution."

It was a challenge that Everett rose to on the critically acclaimed album, recorded 1997-1998 and released on 21 September 1998 in the UK. Although a glance at the track list on the back of the CD jewel box can often make people assume the album is "depressing," E called it "probably the most positive record I will ever make." 

The album, now considered a late 90s rock classic, can at first prove to be a difficult listen, but soon reveals a life-affirming heart. Guests on the album included Everett's neighbours and friends, Mike Simpson of the Dust Brothers, Mickey Petralia, Grant Lee Phillips of Grant Lee Buffalo, Lisa Germano, Jon Brion, and T-Bone Burnett.

It certainly begins in sombre fashion with the sparse, harrowing 'Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor', a powerful and uncomfortable listen with lyrics comprised of passages from his sister's suicide note. The creepy 'Going To Your Funeral Part 1''s rhythm twists and turns awkwardly while distorted falsetto cuts through the song like a knife, countered by its spells of brightness. The record's many highlights include the laugh out loud black humour of 'Cancer For The Cure' ("grandpa's happy watching video porn, with the closed caption on and father knows best... about suicide and smack"), which matches ominous bass and dusty breakbeats to filthy guitar and scratchy samples to produce one of Everett's dirtiest, catchiest moments. After such an intense opening, the wondrous 'My Descent Into Madness' comes as a welcome relief and change of mood, almost like 'Novocaine For The Soul''s dreamy distant relative, floating by peacefully on gentle drum patterns and exquisite orchestral samples. Accompanied only by a gently ticking metronome, harmonious electric guitar, and pretty mellotrons, Everett's vocal on '3 Speed' is magical, as is every word and note. 

The off kilter, Tom Waits-like jazz of 'Hospital Food' journeys back into dark territory adding to the record's overall diversity, before ambient sounds and euphoric moods provide a nice contrast to Everett's weary verses on the title track. 'Efils' God' throws smooth bass, more brilliantly effective sampling and a touch of trip hop into the mix before the brief 'Going To Your Funeral Part II' offers a joyful reprise of its chorus. Stunning lead single 'Last Stop: This Town' is simply one of the best songs of the era. Featuring an irresistibly sweet music box-like hook that carries the track, it imagines the departed as spirits flying over neighbourhoods and cities, able to see everything below them in a way that the living can't. Well, that's how I see it anyway. Despite the song's tragic background, it has a joyous vibe and comes with a humorous video featuring animated singing vegetables. Typical Eels, balancing the sadness with joy. 

The nursery rhyme-like gem 'Baby Genius' leads up to the sad, beautifully yearning 'Climbing To The Moon', a gorgeous track that ranks as one of the Eels' very best. Another one of the era's finest songs, and this one wasn't even released as a single. The upbeat country-flavoured 'Ant Farm' is another life-affirming moment and the poignant 'Dead Of Winter' initially sounds like filler on a 16 track album, but definitely has its rightful place, a more subtle moment that charms gradually. Meanwhile 'The Medication Is Wearing Off' delivers another melancholic Eels classic, before the closing 'P.S. You Rock My World' signals light at the end of the tunnel: "I was thinking about how everyone was dying, and maybe it's time to live"

Electro Shock Blues sold less than its predecessor, yet it earned them a Gold disc in the UK, and showed the public that Eels were about more than just a few lo-fi alt-rock singles. It was a bold, brave move and one that kept Everett's creativity pleasingly restless during the following years. 

SputnikMusic said: "Electro-Shock Blues isn’t just a reaction. It’s a hundred shades of one reaction; a funky, playful album of horrible mirth at times, a completely hopeless document at others, an open stream of all the emotion one could have in the face of being left on your own. And finally, it’s life-affirming, an E beating up through the rubble of his life as if he’s learning some lesson and subtracting the bitter from the bittersweet. Because surely that’s why Electro Shock-Blues ends on the up."

The latest Eels album 'The Deconstruction' was released earlier this year.