EELS

“Souljacker” is easily one of the best albums of this year. Every song, and I really do mean it, every song will stick to your memory after a while, but you will still be able to hear new things, new harmonies and structures or just plain sounds, that you haven’t heard before with every repeated listening. This combination makes for a great album in any case, but there are two more things that I especially like: the nice weirdness and the humour connected to it.

Some things which are weird are nice, others are stupid, some are just sick. Everyone draws the lines a little different, I know that, but everyone knows that E, the main man behind the Eels, is a weird guy. But he is very well aware of his image or his character, whatever you prefer, and his way to cope with the fact, that people think he is weird, is to make ironic fun of it. So he pronounces his “strange man from the woods”-picture, dons a Unabomberjacket and –beard and buts the Logo of “Souljacker” over a “most-wanted-xerox”-picture of himself while kidnapping a poodle. Also, if you remember the cover of the first album “beautiful freak” or just its title alone, that is enough hinting at his constitution. The humour goes on in the way the album cover imitates a 50ies-record-cover all with hints at how to play and protect your disc, exhausting liner-notes and the same overall design. Which doesn’t fit the music at all, but what the heck. Obviously, if you live in the woods with a butler and a small John Deere-trecker, that is all not so important. That is nice weird, not sick, not stupid, not at all blunt, but very thoughtful, emotional and creative. It is like the later parts of the Preacher-Comic or a Coen-Bros-movie. I mean, I have seen the Big Lebowski about fifty times now and I still don’t get bored with it. And I have listened to “Souljacker” at least fifty times in the last two weeks and I still don’t get bored with it. The avoidance of boredom seems to be one of the main motivations behind nearly everything people do nowadays. Some even got to work because they want something to do (not me, no sir. I go to work to earn money, so I have the means to do something and not be bored.)

What would a strange guy like E do? Write songs, obviously, but he wouldn’t want to be alone in the studio while recording, so usually E invites some people who help him to various amounts with songs, production and so on. This time around, John Parish was the second main man with the Eels and these two, with a slew of other guests, managed to produce twelve beautiful song-pearls. The move between noise-outbreaks that start the record like “Dog faced boy”, move on to Americana or alt-country-territory with “Woman driving, man sleeping” until they hit pure pop-terrain with “Friendly Ghost”. In-between “Souljacker” will rock you the way indie-rock hasn’t rocked you in a long time. They also explore a few side-roads and even unexplored areas. Your duty now would be to follow them to wherever they might lead you. Do you remember those great records by the Flaming Lips or Guided by Voices from some years ago? Basically, you could call this to be made in the same vein, but don’t forget that no comparisons ever really fit. Okay, some do, especially in music with all those bandwagon-jumpers, but nobody could ever jump this here wagon, because it is too far off and its tracks are too winding.