MOG Editorial Review

Of Mark Everett's various projects, The Eels have always taken priority for his best work: a whole host of singles and secondary album tracks from all over the Eels' ouvre are used rampantly throughout film and television, and the first Eels record, Beautiful Freak, sported production by Jon Brion while serving as the first major label release. Freak takes grunge-era sardonicism ("Rags to Rags"), mostly-benign indie/alternative misanthropy ("Novocaine For The Soul"), and the influence of hip-hop ("Susan's House") to form its own style of songwriter-based guitar pop, kin to aspects of early Beck, Cake, and Soul Coughing. Across his songs, E finds a consistent source of poignancy in his confusion about what to feel -- about his own life, about the lives around him, about the reasons to love -- and the arrangements only make those feelings that much easier for his songs to evoke.