EELS

Shootenanny!

CD, Dreamworks

After starting like a very very old blues record, full with an old-time blues riff on the guitar and an opening line “when I was born the doctor said / there’s something wrong with this baby’s head” – a point to memorize, by the way – this fabulous album is off to a dozen memorable pop-songs, that’ll instantly stick in your mind, and you’ll sing along to “Saturday Morning”, “Dirty Girl” and “Rock Hard Times”, even though you’ve heard them for the first time. “The rest of the songs don’t take much longer to plant themselves in your memory, maybe a second listen, two and a half maximum. The main power of E’s (you can call him Mark Oliver Everett) songwriting-handicraft lies in the ability to write tunes that just seem right; they’ll still feel a little twisted and weird, especially, when knocked off from an enigmatic or downright strange lyric, e.g. when he sings about being court-ordered to never come close to his true love, due to violent behaviour to a slow and gentle balladesque melody on restraining order blues”. This weirdness pertains through all songs, but it is never ostentative or overpowering the song. Life is a little weird, and so is this songwriter (see opening line).

E could be penning tunes like Paul McCartney or Neil Gallagher and earn millions with them, and being worth it, but he prefers to live in a little hut in the woods, cook pancakes and stay true to either his vision of a perfect record or to a habit that has become a way of living, you chose. Or so it seems. Maybe this weirdness, that prevents success on mainstream-radio, just comes naturally to him (again, see opening line). Then again, both McCartney and Oasis have written and recorded songs that seemed definitely to be filler material, less than mediocre, and there is not one of these on “Shootenanny!”. Closer to the truth, “Shootenanny!” is a picture-perfect top-scorer musicwise, a definite stayer for any top of the year list, whose genre-definition can be loosened enough to invite the inclusion of this record. So wait up for “Shootenanny!” to appear in “Best Metal Albums 2003” or “Best Classic Rock Album 2003”, it wouldn’t puzzle me. None at all, because one of the magi points of the Eels’ music lies in the dichotomy between sounding absolutely familiar and the defying of any genre. The question is, what exactly is it? There are too many guitars to be plainly pop, but also tunes too nicely penned to be rock. There is some blues, some country, some folk, but never enough to stand out and voice a definition. Amountwise, these influences show up as much as in the songs of any teenager learning to play guitar, who has listened to the radio, because these influences are part of our social heritage, even if our heritage is washed down for generations and is kicked with boots on a daily basis. Could be that the Eels’ music is a step to rekindle the flame that kept this (old) music alive, but I don’t think so. Whatever it is, it sure makes sitting between the stools look better than a nice, comfy place on the sofa.

There’s something that is so great about good lines in a song; lines that are worthwhile to be memorized and to be used again and again within or without an appropriate context. Within the 13 songs on “Shootenanny!” there are at least two great, citeable lines in any given song, usually the opening line and the refrain. Which gives us a hint at E’s songwriting – starting off with a great idea and then working to the next and so on, until there is a full-grown song. But some songs are completely crammed with great lines, e.g. “Good Old Days”. Which really speaks for the lyrical competence of E, a point which is not often mentioned, but is a fact. Maybe he is a natural poet, because I just can’t imagine him straining hard over his lyric-sheets, searching for words to fit the music or vice-versa. It seems to me that both come out of him at the same time, in a sort of stream of consciousness-idea finding. A gifted man, he is.