Vagrant Records will release EELS’ eighth studio album End Times on January 19. EELS is the ever-changing project of singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mark Oliver Everett (aka E). End Times follows on the heels of EELS’ critically acclaimed 2009 release Hombre Lobo, hailed by Vanity Fair as “anti-anthems that get your dopamine pumping instead of your fist” and praised by Rolling Stone for its “muddy roadhouse rockers.” Largely self-recorded on an old four track tape machine in the basement of Everettt’s Los Angeles home, the “end times” he writes about isn’t “Mayan calendar conspiracy theory bullshit,” says Everett, but, “the state of the desperate times we live in. The bottom line-ness of it all.”
While Hombre Lobo was written from the point of view of a fictional character (namely, the Dog Faced Boy of EELS’ 2001 album Souljacker), End Times is purely real life as Everett sees it: a “divorce album” with a modern twist. He equates his personal loss with the world he lives in losing its integrity. This isn’t Everett’s first break-up record. His 1993 solo effort, Broken Toy Shop, chronicled the broken heart of a young man in his twenties. End Times focuses on the loss of a middle-aged man growing as an artist. The loss has more weight.
As for the timing of the release, “I felt guilty about the long gap between the last two albums so I’m making up for lost time,” Everett says. The longest gap between EELS albums (four years between the 2005 release Blinking Lights and Other Revelations and the 2009 Hombre Lobo) is being followed by the shortest (six months between Hombre Lobo and End Times).
During the four years prior to Hombre Lobo Everett embarked on a number of projects including his acclaimed book Things the Grandchildren Should Know and the BBC produced multiple-award winning Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives documentary film about Everett and his quantum physicist father, Hugh Everett III, which was broadcast on PBS’ Nova series in the fall of 2008. Everett says he’s now “back to my real job: making music full time.”
No comments:
Post a Comment