I readily admit that I haven’t given the new Eels album as much spins as I normally give to albums before making any sort of more coherent ramble about them. The problem is I’ve no actual desire to give it more spins.

There’s three things I love about Mark Oliver Everett’s work: his wonderful charisma as a singer and performer, the constant bittersweet air around his songs that turn even the most optimistic moments into slightly teary-eyed and weary, and the man’s insanely well-crafted taste for rich, beautiful melodies that fill the air in the Eels sound. Take two of those factors away and you’ve got Hombre Lobo.

The unabomber beard, now christened as the werewolf beard, is back as is the grittier rock and roll sound – yes indeed, Hombre Lobo is Souljacker part 2. Souljacker’s never been one of my favourite Eels albums – granted, I haven’t heard it in yonks because for some reason it happens to be elusive in music stores and I’ve yet to be arsed to order it online so my view on it might be different these days – so this isn’t really that great of a personal comparison, even if apt stylistically. Everett murmurs through Hombre Lobo’s 12 songs (of desire), the guitars are revved up high, the bass is growly, and so forth. Here and there Everett goes back to his trademark heartfelt ballads that we all so love, but rather than sticking with the lush sounds of the previous albums the instrumentation’s more minimal, similarly more emphasising the electric guitar like the rest of the album. Hombre Lobo sees Everett strip down his sound from his usual richer, lusher style.

But it’s all a bit too simple. Whenever Hombre Lobo rocks, it’s just blasting through 3 minutes with a dirty blues beat and some crunchy guitar. I’ve nothing against Eels rockers – who could forget such classics as “Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas”, “Going Fetal” or most of Beautiful Freak – but Hombre Lobo’s rock things are boring in lack of a better word. The lead single “Fresh Blood” and its full moon howl craze, curiously almost devoid of guitar, offers its most inspired cut while the rest simply just try to bring a ruckus but lack any substance. However, Everett’s balladeering pen’s never been worn out and thus Hombre Lobo’s best cuts are offered with the smaller scale heart-in-sleeve ditties; they’re not as strong as a lot of the things on the previous Eels albums but you can’t deny the loveliness of songs like “My Timing Is Off” and “All the Beautiful Things”. Then there’s also “Beginner’s Luck”, a happy little thumpalong with some irresistable woo-oo-oohs.

I’m not gonna say that Hombre Lobo’s a failure, that would be rather daft considering how much enjoyable moments there are on the album. It’s not a failure, it just doesn’t really ignite a spark. It took me the removal of the album context and separate listens of several songs here to actually grab into them and even so, no song here really sounds like a future contender for a classic Eels moment outside Fresh Blood that gets more and more adorably dangerous with each listen. Plus, the rockers are mainly just very very dull and not a particularly inspiring bunch of songs to lure you back into the album. Everett’s done much better and despite the fact that Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire isn’t a failure, I can’t help but feel a tad disappointed. And thus we go back to the starting point of not actually feeling like giving Hombre Lobo spins: for all its good points, it doesn’t really invite the listener to return to listen to it in full.

Fresh Blood

MP3: My Timing Is Off

Order Hombre Lobo from Amazon: UK / US

Tags: eels

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.