The Eels’ first 3 albums were as integral to my teenage years as my closest friends were. Though the electronic-tinged folk-rock tunes of bandleader Mark Oliver Everett were decidedly simple, their spirit resonated with me like few others have before or since. I often felt (feel) the way those songs sound- like you’re waking up hungover from whatever lousy hand life had dealt you the night before, and you’re wondering why you should even bother to get out of bed… but then you hear a bird singing a lovely song just outside your window, and you get up and look at it blissfully chilling on a tree branch, and somehow that’s enough for you to want to leave the house and face life again.
Once I got wrapped up in college, however, me and The Eels- not unlike me and most of my high school pals- drifted apart. We didn’t have a falling-out or anything. It’s just that there were so many new friends/bands to discover that our relationship slipped through the cracks. I made a date with Souljacker but I was so distracted with other things that, I’m sorry to admit, I could barely pay attention to what it had to say. A couple years later I ran into Shootenanny when I was DJing for the college radio station, but I only had time to squeeze in a couple of tracks in between listens of the new Deerhoof and Fiery Furnaces records. When the double album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations came out in 2005, I didn’t even realize it existed until months later.
Tomorrow Morning is the 3rd part of a trilogy that the band has released in just over a year’s time (after Hombre Lobo and End Times), but it’s the first Eels album I’ve sat through in something like a decade. I’m happy to hear that Everett is basically the same old, dear friend I grew to love all those years ago. Sure, he’s been through some shit in the meantime- thankfully, nothing seemingly as bad as what he went through during Electro-Shock Blues. He appears happier this time around; of course, even when he’s happy he still sounds a little sad, and when he’s sad he still has a pretty good sense of humor about it. He can still write a handful of memorable songs like “Oh So Lovely” and “Mystery Of Life;” he still writes plenty of lyrics that make me laugh out loud (”The bad girls think I’m just too nice/ and the nice girls call me Dick”); and he still occasionally finds new ways to tweak his trademark style, like in the muted gospel of “Looking Up.”
Alas, I doubt I’ll be able to spend much time with Tomorrow Morning. It made a fine first impression and all, but…I’ve just got a lot going on these days and…yeah I know you understand, Eels, I just thought I’d explain…yes of course we’re still cool. We’ll always be cool. You’re like a brother to me. And hey, in another year or two when you put out a new record, we’ll totally get together again and have some cold ones.
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